Dealing With Changes
by OhNoTheyFoundMe
Summary: When Dumbledore's latest idea for fostering interhouse unity is a house exchange, the students are horrified. It's hard enough to deal with Hogwarts when they're in their own houses. But things are about to get worse for Hermione, Pansy, Blaise,Naville and Padma. A whole, whole lot worse. Dramione, Luneville, Pansy/Ron and Harry/Ginny
1. Chapter 1- Exchanges

**AN: 2.01.18 I've been working on this story for so long and I'm halfway through the next chapter but I'm so incredibly depressed I don't think I'll be able to finish this. I've been putting this off for so long , thinking it was just a phase. I'm really sorry to anyone I've let down. But I have to take care of My mental health first and I might get back to this someday.**

 **AN: 1.03.2018 I'm baaaaaack!**

The second that Hermione walked into the Great Hall for breakfast, she knew that something was up.

Dumbledore was beaming, but that wasn't what alerted her to the fact that _something_ was about to happen. Snape looked like he was seething in anger, instead of the usual mildly annoyed expression that he wore at breakfast. Professor McGonagall and Professor Sprout wore identical stony expressions and the normally cheery Professor Flitwick looked abnormally dismal.

The other students hadn't noticed yet and were talking among themselves, oblivious to the atypical behaviour of the teachers.

"Ron," Hermione nudged him. He was shoveling bacon into his mouth like he had been starved for days. She did her best to keep the disgusted look off her face when he asked her, with his mouth still full of food, "What's the matter, Hermione?'

Or at least, she supposed that that was what he was trying to say. What it actually came out as ,was a garbled "whaa maddah 'mione?"

"Finish your mouthful before talking, you moron." she poked him playfully. "But do you think that the teachers look a bit odd today?'

He squinted at them for a second before shaking his head and resuming his quest to stuff his face with as much food as he possibly could before their classes began.

 _Well, I suppose we'll find out soon enough._

She was correct, as she generally tended to be.

A few minutes before their breakfast ended, Dumbledore stood up. Most of the students continued their conversations and it took a few seconds before the hall lapsed into a silence which was only broken by the sound of someone sneezing.

"I would like to announce the beginning of an exciting new program that will be held this year at Hogwarts." Dumbledore paused for a few seconds and the students began whispering their theories excitedly.

-maybe they'll bring the Triwizard tournament back-

-probably a pen pal program with Durmstrang-

-as long as it lets me skip classes, I'm up for it-

Dumbledore waited for the whispering to subside before speaking again.

"We'll be doing a student exchange program between the houses!"

Behind him, Professor McGonagall covered her face with her hand as if she was asking God for patience.

The students clearly did not share Dumbledore's enthusiasm. The shocked silence turned into angry mutters that sounded collectively like the buzzing of bees.

"Your Professors and I have selected a group of people, a boy and a girl from each house to be switched to another house for this year. Since this is the first time and this is experimental, only the sixth years will be taking part in this program as the fifth and seventh years will be busy with their OWLS and NEWTS."

"Bloody hell." Ron muttered beside her, "I hope its not me who got selected."

Even Harry's face was ashen. "Imagine if I get selected and get put into Slytherin for a year. There couldn't be anything worse."

"We didn't come back for our final year at Hogwarts for this. This is as bad as Umbridge was. " one of the Weasley twins said loudly.

"Please keep an open mind," Dumbledore continued. "This is to foster unity among the houses. And now, the list of students to be exchanged..."

"From Hufflepuff, we have Zacharias Smith and Hannah Abbott." Loud protesting could be heard from Zacharias while Hannah stood there silently in mortification. "From Ravenclaw, Padma Patil and Michael Corner will be switched. From Gryffindor, Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom and finally, from Slytherin, Pansy Parkinson and Blaise Zabini."

Hermione turned to look at Ron and Harry with a stunned face. Their expressions mirrored hers when they looked back to her.

"You're not in Slytherin, Hermione. You'll probably be put in Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw instead. You'd love Ravenclaw probably." Ron muttered to her, patting her hand.

"And now for the houses they will be switched into. Michael Corner and Pansy Parkinson will be in Gryffindor. Hermione Granger and Zacharias Smith will be in Slytherin. Neville Longbottom and Hannah Abbott will both be in Ravenclaw while Blaise Zabini and Padma Patil will be in Hufflepuff."

"Will the selected students please go and sit with their new house?"

Hermione hoisted her book back up. Her heart was thudding in her chest as she looked over at the Slytherin table. She saw people who had bullied her since the first year for being muggle-born, she saw others she didn't know, and she saw Draco Malfoy, throwing her a disgusted, yet smug look; like he had hell planned for her already.

She took a seat at the very end of the table,as far away from Malfoy as she could and smiled at the students surrounding her, hoping to make a friend. None of them smiled back.

Her heart sunk.

This year would be awful.

To say that Pansy Parkinson was having a bad day would be an understatement. She had stumbled out of bed in the morning with a headache and feeling ill from drinking so much the night before. To make matters worse, she looked and felt like a lifeless corpse. She wouldn't mind so much, but people had expectations. And if there was one thing that her parents had drilled into her head, it was to keep up with what people expected from you.

It was for that reason only, that Pansy had bothered to get up that morning. She'd brushed her hair and the clump of long jet black strands that came out in her fingers did nothing to improve her mood.

 _Just smile and look good and get this over with._

She forced a smile onto her lips and went to meet her boyfriend, Draco, so that they could walk to the great hall together.

When the announcement that there would be an exchange program for the seventh years came out, Pansy was excited. She was even more excited when her name was called. She had always wanted to be in Hufflepuff, not that she would ever tell her parents. They'd disown her. "Duty before Desire" was what they always said.

Being put into Gryffindor was _not_ what she had in mind. She looked over at the table she was supposed to sit at. The Weasley twins grinned at her evilly, half of the table wouldn't even look at her (though she supposed she deserved that. She had been insulting them for years.) and worst of all, the girl she was jealous of, Padma Patil, had gotten sorted into Hufflepuff and she was already making friends with the other Hufflepuff students.

"Why don't you come sit with us Parkinson?" one of the Weasley twins called. She wasn't sure which one it was.

She gulped, trying to hide how scared she actually was. She looked back at Draco for some emotional support, but he wasn't even looking at her.

"Yeah, c'mon Parkinson." the other Weasley twin called out.

"No thanks." she tried to sound haughty and indifferent.

She ignored them and took a seat with some first years. Hopefully, they would be too scared of her to pick on her. She was used to being the one doing the picking on, but she was out of her own territory now.

"Wimp." the first Weasley twin called.

"Wuss." the other one added.

She wished that she had perfected her glamouring charm so she could disappear then and there.

Neville was quite happy when he was sorted into Ravenclaw. He already had a friend in that house- Luna Lovegood and he had sat next to her without having to think about it. The other girl who had also been selected for Ravenclaw, Hannah Abbott, was one of the nicer Hufflepuffs he had talked to. He had actually been nursing a small crush on her for a while, so this house exchange program would give him ample opportunity to get to know her.

He hadn't particularly liked being in Gryffindor anyway. He had never felt like he _belonged_ in Gryffindor and he hoped that the house exchange program would help him feel like he fit in somewhere.

Padma Patil had always loved being in Ravenclaw. But her logical brain told her to make the most of the situation so she smiled at the surrounding Hufflepuffs. They were definitely the friendliest house so she already felt welcome. But honestly, she just wanted to go back to sleep. She had stayed up all night organizing her notes on the research on unicorns she liked to do in her spare time.

She did her best to fight a yawn as Dumbledore began speaking again.

"While you are in this house, you will be a _part_ of this house. Any house points you lose will be lost from your new house. Any you gain will be added to your new house. The rest of the students can go to their classes, the selected students please stay back and talk to their new heads of houses. Also, would Draco Malfoy stay back."

Padma stood up and strolled over to where Professor Sprout was waiting for her. Blaise, the other boy who had also been placed into Hufflepuff sidled upto her.

"This sucks, doesn't it?"

She shrugged. "Doesn't really bother me, as long as it doesn't interfere in my work."

He gave her a weird look which she didn't even bother trying to interpret.

"We should be friends." Blaise suggested. "You know, to help each other out with coping with a new house."

She shrugged again. "Sure, if you want to be. As long as you leave me alone so I can do my own work. And no, you can't copy off my homework."

Blaise looked nonplussed by her reply. He was _the_ Blaise Zabini. The pureblood, good looking and wealthy son of two respected parents. To top it off, he was also a member of the Slytherin Quidditch team, although he was in Hufflepuff now...

He had expected her reply to be a little more enthusiastic than that.

"Yeah, whatever then." He tried to look as if her reply didn't bother him.

"Let's just get this over with."

 **A/N: Hey guys :) leave your opinions on whether the changing point of views is too distracting or not please**

 **Edited 18.07.17 to fix a mistake with the timing**


	2. Chapter 2- Messes

Although Hermione was against being disrespectful to teachers, she had to admit, Snape was one of her least favourite teachers.

"Granger, you were a prefect in Gryffindor and Parkinson was the Slytherin prefect, which means that you and Parkinson will be exchanging your roles. You'll be the Sytherin prefect with Malfoy."

Snape leaned in close to Hermione. "And if...you cost us our house points...or deduct house points unfairly, I assure you, you'll have _me_ to deal with." His voice was so cold it made her cringe.

"Of course." she tried to hide the slight shake in her voice. She hated the prospect of having him for a house head.

"What?" Draco asked. He had been silent till then. "I can't work with _her._ " he protested.

"Neither of us want her here." Snape said coldly.

 _Wow, I feel so wanted._ Hermione thought sarcastically.

"Unfortunately, Dumbledore has his mind made up. So we're both stuck with her."

"My father shall hear about this." Draco said furiously.

"Well, let's hope that he can change Dumbledore's mind then. Until then, you shall have to find a way to cooperate. I won't have my house name tarnished because two imbeciles can't put aside their own personal vendettas and work together. Malfoy, give her your class schedule. And show her to the Slytherin common rooms after class ends."

He swished his cloak and walked away, probably to his first class.

Draco threw her a disgusted look as soon as Snape left. He rummaged through his bag for the class schedules, purposely taking longer than usual as Hermione held out her hand for it expectantly.

"Here you go." he said when he had finally found it.

"Thanks." Hermione replied begrudgingly. But she had spoken too soon, he proceeded to tear his schedule into small pieces of parchment and threw them into the air. They fluttered to the floor around her.

"Oops." he smirked at her before striding away.

"So mature, Malfoy. Thanks a lot." she muttered to his back before trying to pick up the pieces of parchment.

Hermione was late to her first class of the day because she had spent a while picking up the pieces of parchment before casting a spell to make them join themselves together again.

Luckily, the Slytherins had A Care Of Magical Creatures with the Hufflepuffs for their first class on Mondays and Hagrid didn't dock house points from Hermione after she explained, in hushed whispers, why she had been late.

On the negative side, the project they were working on was a group project and Hermione was forced to join the same group that Pansy had been in when she was in to say, Malfoy, Daphne Greengrass and Theodore Nott were not happy when Hermione was instructed to join their group. Even worse, the project- catching and cleaning a Reflective Swarthog- required them to communicate.

The Reflective Swarthog looked a lot like a pig. The only difference being, their skin was impervious to any kind of magic and whenever a spell was fired at them, it was reflected off them like they were a mirror.

Hermione quickly realized that while Daphne didn't plan on taking part in the group exercise at all, Nott was perfectly willing to take part, but would do it in the stupidest way possible.

" _Stupefy, Stupefy, Stupefy!"_ he shot multiple spells at the Swarthog.

"Nott, you moron, STOP!" Draco yelled at him, flailing his arms to get his attention.

Two of the spells backfired from the Swarthog but hit nothing, but the third spell hit a Hufflepuff girl who fell to the ground, unconscious and then got trampled by her own Swarthog, which she was supposed to be catching.

"Malfoy, you come at it from that side, I'll get it from this side." Hermione shouted at him over the shouts of the other students.

"I'm not taking orders from a mudblood." he yelled back at her.

She was tempted to let him catch the swarthog alone (Nott had taken advantage of the commotion of the students running about and was still firing spells in random directions), but Hermione hated failing. Hagrid had warned them that if they didn't at least manage to catch the Swarthog, they would be failing that project.

"Fine, what's your plan then?" she asked Malfoy.

"To catch the Swarthog and not fail."

"That's a brilliant plan, Malfoy. I can't believe I didn't think of that." she said sarcastically. Malfoy went back to running after the animal.

Hermione joined Daphne who was standing by Hagrid's hut, examining her nails. Daphne was one of the few Slytherins who didn't hate her for her blood status; she just hated her in general.

"Greengrass," Hermione said cautiously, "do you want to help me catch the Swarthog?"

Daphne gave her a once over, taking in everything from the frizzy brown hair on her head to the smear of dirt across Hermione's sweater.

"Nope." she popped the 'p'. "Unless you can tell me how I benefit from doing that."

"Imagine Malfoy's annoyance when two girls catch the Swarthog that he couldn't. Imagine his face." Hermione smiled to herself, it was rare that she let her mischievous side show.

Daphne thought about it for a second. "Only if you have a plan that doesn't involve me getting dirty."

"We just need to get it to open it's mouth. I think I know how to do that, you just need to scare it enough. Swarthogs screech when they're terrified. I'll shoot a stupefy into it's mouth."

Daphne sighed, and took off running. She ran straight at the Swarthog, flailing her arms and screeching like a banshee. Some of the students turned to stare at her, others burst into laughter. Hermione ran after her.

The Swarthog, who was having too much fun running away from Malfoy, didn't see Daphne until she was quite close. At that moment, the Swarthog became so scared that it stopped running, let out a load of poop and opened it's mouth wide and let out a loud screech.

Daphne clutched at her ears, Malfoy, who hadn't been expecting the sound, skidded on the pile of poop the Swarthog had ejected, and fell over.

Hermione, who was holding in her laughter, shot a stupefy at the animal, and it fell over unconscious.

Daphne laughed at the dung-covered Draco till she was red in the face, and high-fived Hermione. Hermione, who was still holding in her laughter, because she didn't want to make Draco feel worse than he was feeling, held out her hand to help him up.

"I would rather be covered in this shite than touch a mudblood." Draco growled at her. The small smile Hermione had slowly slipped off her face.

Pansy Parkinson was _scared,_ although the last thing she would to do was show anyone exactly how scared she was. If anyone showed fear to a fellow Slytherin, chances were, someone was going to take advantage of that fear and use it against her. She wasn't sure how things worked in Gryffindor.

She put on an indifferent face as she took a seat in the only available seat left in the Potions classroom- next to the blood traitor Ronald Weasley.

He didn't even acknowledge her.

 _So that's how it's going to be._

Pansy didn't like Ron, but she _hated_ being ignored.

"I hate potions." she said aloud to no one in particular, hoping he'd reply.

No response. He stared blankly at the door, waiting for Slughorn to enter.

"So...you're my fellow prefect..." she tried again.

Ron ignored her again. Pansy was irritated now.

"You're a stupid blood traitor and I hate you." she spat at him angrily.

He rolled his eyes at that.

"Look, Parkinson. We don't like each other. We both know that, so here's an idea, stop talking to me. Also, Hermione usually drew up the patrol route and schedule and I have no clue how to, so that's on you."

He turned back to his book and started doodling on it.

Pansy seethed silently in her seat, she wondered what Draco was doing then. Or if he was thinking of her. Most probably, he wasn't. Their relationship had been going downhill recently.

She looked over at Ron's doodle. It was a lion biting the head off a snake.

 _I wish I was in Hufflepuff instead._ She thought.

The Ravenclaws had double potions with the Gryffindors that morning, so Neville wasn't feeling too uncomfortable.

He was sitting with Hannah,but only because he thought that it would be lame of him to follow Luna around the entire day, although Luna wouldn't mind if he did.

"So... Ravenclaw, huh?" he asked Hannah awkwardly.

Hannah probably felt as awkward as he did because she smiled shyly and just said "Yeah."

Neville scrambled for something to say in reply to that, but drew a blank.

 _This is your chance._ He thought desperately. _Say something charming._

"I...like your plants." he blurted.

"What?" she asked confused.

"I like to dance." he amended quickly. He couldn't dance. Sometimes, he couldn't even walk in a straight line without tripping over his own feet.

"You do?" Hannah asked him excitedly. "Me too. We should dancing together someday, they have karaoke nights at Madame Rosmerta's on Saturdays after eight. We could go there on our first Hogsmede weekend...if you want to." she added shyly.

"I would love to." he replied without thinking.

"It's a date then." she smiled at him.

 _Brilliant, Neville. Brilliant._

His face turned a mottled red slowly.

Harry had nothing against Michael Corner. They were acquaintances and nodded at each other whenever they met in the hallways. But when Michael decided to sit next to Harry for their potions class, Harry discovered that Michael talked, a lot. Which wouldn't have been so bad, but to top it off, he was also an obnoxious git.

"-We always go to my mother's villa in the alps for the snow-brooming season. We wouldn't be able to afford it really, but my mum is quite high up in the Ministry and-" he droned on and on.

Harry didn't want to outright tell him to shut up so all he did was reply in "hmm"s and "yeah"s as they worked on the potion together. The only problem was the fact that Michael took the "hmm"s to be encouragement for him to continue rambling.

At least his situation wasn't as bad as Ron's was. He was stonily ignoring Pansy and they were glaring at each other more often than actually working on the potion.

Harry was ready to tear his- or Michael's- hair out to get Michael to stop talking when it happened. Ron's and Pansy's potion exploded, showering most of the class in the viscous green liquid that had been in their cauldron.

"Weasley" Pansy shrieked. " I told you to _measure the ingredients before you chuck them into the cauldon, you blithering idiot."_

Ron looked a little abashed at that.

"Sorry." he muttered, sounding insinscere.

Slughorn was furious. "Detention!" he yelled. "Both of you . And fifty points from Gryffindor."

And that was when the screaming started.

 **A/N: Hey guys:) thanks for reading this. I wrote two chs in a day, yay! It's 2 am now so I'm gonna sleep now. Laters, tatertots.**


	3. Chapter 3- Embarrassment

Hermione knew that she would have to pay for the humiliation she caused Draco, and she was right. Although Malfoy didn't bully her himself, he certainly didn't protest when Crabbe tripped her over so she went sprawling into the mud on their way back upto the castle.

She didn't mind too much though, still feeling slightly smug over the successful capture of the swarthog... at least until someone levitated a ball of swarthog poop and flung it at the back of her head. Most of the Slytherins started laughing at that.

Daphne had gone straight back to hating her now that their temporary truce was over and the other boy who had been transferred into Slytherin, Zacharias Smith, was among those who were laughing at her. She was alone.

"You guys are pigs." she yelled at them before hurrying back to the castle. She would not cry in front of them, it would rob her of the little dignity she had left.

Her first thought was to run to the place she always went to when she was upset- the library. But she was wet and covered in mud and faeces and she would be banned from the library permanently if she turned up there like that.

Instead, she hurried to her other safe place- the Gryffindor common room. Or at least, she tried to. The fat lady wouldn't let her in.

"What do you mean you can't let me in?"

"I'm sorry, Hermione. I really am. But you've been transferred to Slytherin for this year. I can't let a Slytherin in." The Fat Lady's expression was full of pity as she took in Hermione's state of dress and it was all she could do not to start crying then and there.

"But what about my clothes and my trunk?"

"They've already been transferred to the Slytherin common room."

"But I don't even know where that _is._ And I have fifteen minutes left before my next class begins. I need to get changed and take a shower fast."

"I can't help you dear." the Fat lady shook her head sadly.

Hermione forced a smile onto her face.

"Thanks anyway." She debated what to do for a few seconds before she took off running in the direction of the prefect bathrooms.

 _Thank God._ She thought as the door swung open with the password. If the password had been changed then she would be in a huge mess.

She stripped off her clothes and got into the swimming-pool sized bathtub. She dunked herself under water, scrubbing herself off as fast as she could, she only had a few minutes left for her next class and she still had to clean her clothes.

She thought she heard a sound and she froze. She was crouching beside the tub, naked, trying to scrub the mud off her clothes.

"Hello?" she called.

The bathroom was silent.

"Is anyone there?" she called again.

Suddenly Draco's head popped up from beneath a mound of bubbles in the tub. Hermione screamed and clutched at her wet clothes trying to cover herself.

"What the hell are you doing, Malfoy?" she shrieked so shrilly that it hurt her own ears. "Don't you knock? Do you have no common sense? Clearly the bathroom was occupied. How long have you been there for?"

"Relax, Granger. I was just here for the same thing you were. Besides, it's not like you have anything worth seeing to hide. You're the ugliest mudblood I've ever seen."

Hermione was almost speechless with anger and embarrassment.

"Just- just turn around so I can put my bloody clothes on."

"Make me." Draco smirked.

Furious, Hermione grabbed her wand and cast a bat bogey hex on him. Draco hadn't actually expected her to do anything so he was caught unawares. She dried her clothes quickly with a charm and tugged them on while Draco did his best to stop the bats flying out of his nose. She ran from the bathroom, more embarrassed than she'd ever been before.

She hoped he hadn't seen anything. She thanked her lucky stars that _she_ hadn't seen anything that would have scarred her mentally for life.

She ran to her transfiguration class, barely able to make it on time.

She'd been looking forward to her transfiguration class, mostly because it was with the Gryffindors and after spending the morning with the Slytherins, she wanted to be with her friends. But when she got to McGonagall's classroom, she didn't see Ron or Harry.

Or any of her friends.

In fact, all of the Gryffindors were missing. She waited expectantly for them to come back from their potions class but they never showed. By the end of the class, Hermione was a mixture of worried and annoyed.

How could all the Gryffindors bunk class together?...Unless...something had happened.

When she gathered the courage to interrupt Professor McGonagall's class and asked her where all the Gryffindors were, the look McGonagall gave her scared her a little bit.

"You mean to say you haven't heard what happened?"

"Heard what?" she asked, alarmed.

Pansy was on fire. Literally. In every spot the potion touched, small flames erupted. The exploded potion had hit Pansy first, which was why she was the first to catch fire. The next to start burning was Ron.

Pansy was so busy screaming at Ron and being screamed at by Slughorn that she didn't even notice that her skin was burning until the flames had spread to other people and the entire class erupted in screams of panic.

Michael Corner was the first person to react. "Douse them with fire." he screamed before shouting _"Augumenti"_ and fired a jet of water at the person nearest to him- Harry.

The flames Harry was engulfed in went out for a few seconds but then they were back with even more force.

The entire class was in chaos. The fire had spread to the other potions and three other cauldrons had already exploded. Even Slughorn was panicking.

"Never try to put out a potion-induced fire with water." he was yelling. "It might react with the potion and make the fire worse."

"So what do we DO?" someone yelled.

Students scrambled for the door, trying to get away from the flames.

It was Luna who finally figured out a solution.

"Its because of the fire wrinxes. You have to blow out the flames like birthday candles." she shouted happily, above all the commotion.

She started blowing out the small flames which covered her arms, but this time, the flames stayed out.

"I know a spell that can solve this." Michael yelled. He pointed his want at the ceiling and yelled " _Ventus."_

A gust of wind sped through the room, and rapidly extinguished all the flames, but not before knocking over most of the tables in the room and the remaining cauldrons that hadn't exploded.

The room was a wreck. Most people were covered in blistering red burns, half of Pansy's hair had been singed off and Ron's left eyebrow was missing.

The only sound in the class was that of Luna giggling. "It was a birthday party. For the fire wrinxes. Wasn't it fun?"

Slughorn took a deep breath. "I think we should all go to the hospital wing. And Parkinson, Weasley, I've changed my mind. Make that detention for a week."

 **A/N: this ch isn't the best, I know. I've been pretty ill recently and I felt like I needed to upload something. I'll probably improve it when I edit :((**


	4. Chapter 4 - Whispers

Hermione skipped lunch and ran to the Hospital wing.

There were at least forty students in there, sitting on the floor or on the beds or just milling around and having a good time because they had a legitimate excuse to skip the rest of their classes for the day. Every single student had a metallic smelling yellow ointment smeared across their burns, although they didn't seem to be in any sort of discomfort.

Hermione pushed through the throng of people, trying to spot Harry's familiar tuft of messy black hair or Ron's ginger hair.

"What happened?" she asked, running up to them when she finally spotted them leaning against the wall.

"Ron and Parkinson blew up the potions classroom." Harry supplied helpfully, hiding his grin behind his hand.

"What?"

"I accidentally made our cauldron explode because I didn't measure the ingredients properly." Ron grumbled. "Although honestly, it was that moron Michael Corner's fault. If he hadn't tried to drown us all then the flames wouldn't have gotten worse. Everyone knows you aren't supposed to try and put out potion-induced fires with water."

Hermione raised her eyebrows at him.

"Well, fine. I didn't know. But I do now." he said defensively. "He was just trying to show off his Ravenclaw brains." he snorted.

"It's true." Harry muttered darkly. "He's been showing off all morning, he wouldn't shut up about his stupid villa in the alps and snow-brooming, whatever that is."

"And now, I have bloody detention for a week with that stupid Parkinson." Ron finished, annoyed.

"Speaking of Parkinson, have you been nice to her? I know you hate her but the Slytherins have been horrible to me and it feels terrible."

Ron shifted guiltily on his feet.

"I don't want to talk to her and I don't want to work with her and I hate her." he put on his best sulky pouting face.

"What have the Slytherins done?" Harry demanded. He looked ready to go fight a battle on her behalf, even though he was injured and half his face was covered with the yellow ointment. She loved that about Harry; he was so defensive and loyal to his friends.

She described her day briefly in a hushed voice, her face flushing puce when she got to the part where Malfoy may or may not have seen her without her clothes on.

"We could take him on." Ron said when she'd finally finished narrating her tale. There were only a few minutes of lunch left.

Hermione turned around when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned around and saw that it was Pansy. She looked terrible. Her arms were covered in the yellow ointment and so was a bit of her chin and neck.

She looked tired and miserable.

Ron groaned when he saw her. " Tell her to go away, she's done enough-" he fell silent when Hermione flashed him a warning look.

"Have you seen Draco?" Pansy asked her, a tad hopeful, "Is he coming to meet me?"

"Erm... he was eating lunch when I last saw him." Hermione had had a horrible day, but she still felt a twinge of pity for Pansy when her face fell .

"Don't bother feeling sorry for me, mudblood." The twinge of pity Hermione had felt vanished. "He has better things to do than mingle with blood traitors and losers." She sneered at Hermione.

Pansy had seen the flash of pity in Hermione's eyes and had lashed out as a reflex action. _Don't accept pity from others,_ her mother had told her, _it makes you look weak if you do._

She wanted to take it back as soon as she had said it, Hermione was one of the only people who had shown her any semblance of compassion that day. But she couldn't apologize. It had been drilled into her at a very young age that she must never, _ever_ apologize for anything she did. She shouldn't make mistakes to apologize for in the first place.

Hardly anyone understood what kind of pressure Pansy was under to always act perfectly and look good and be respected in the pureblood community.

"He has better things to do than talk to _you_ too." Hermione said pleasantly. She wasn't in the mood to take sass from anyone.

Pansy didn't reply to that and left them alone.

Neville was having fun. The burns had given him a reason to miss Snape's class, which he had been dreading. And on top of that, Luna was making him smile with her rants about 'Fire Wrinxes'. Neville was one of the few people who actually took Luna seriously, and didn't laugh at her or call her crazy because of her beliefs.

Besides, she had been right about the fact that blowing out the fire would extinguish it; she might be right about the fact that it was caused by "Fire Wrinxes" even if no one else had heard about them before.

Hannah was sulking in the corner because the fire had burned off her left eye's eyelashes, her left eyebrow and had singed her hair short. Madame Pomphrey had assured her that her hair would grow back within the week.

"Luna," Neville tugged on a strand of her long dirty blonde hair gently to get her attention.

"Yes?" she asked in that slightly out of focus, dreamy way of hers.

"Hannah wants to go on a date with me." he whispered, glancing at the sulking Hannah, who still managed to look pretty while she pouted.

"That's amazing" Luna patted his back. "Hannah is really nice. You'll have fun with her."

"But she wants to go dancing, and I can't dance. I accidentally told her that I could."

"Don't worry, Neville. Sometimes the greatest things are discovered by accident... like the Gulping Plimpy." She finished happily.

"I think I've heard about that." Neville smiled, Luna's happiness was contagious. "Is that the one where..."

It was evening when Hermione tried to return to the Slytherin common room. She knew that it was in the dungeons somewhere but she couldn't figure out where. She wandered around for a while, searching for a wall that stood out to her but she couldn't seem to find one. There were no other Slytherins in sight.

She didn't want to go and ask Snape to help her. She sunk down to the floor and buried her head in her arms, waiting for another Slytherin to show up so she could follow them.

"Lost, Granger?" It was Theodore Nott. She didn't know how long she had been sitting there for but it felt like it had been hours.

"Yeah, I was wondering if you could help me find the Slytherin dormitory?"she tried a smile.

He leered at her. "I could do it...for a price."

She gripped her wand a little tighter. "Depends on the price." she said evenly.

"I want...four packs of Bertie Bott's Every Flavoured Beans."

That was _not_ what she had been expecting at all, but then, Nott wasn't the brightest bulb in the box.

"I'd ask for more, but I think you'll like what we have planned for you." He smiled evilly.

 _What is he on about?_ She wondered.

She found out the second he led her to the Slytherin common room. Everyone was huddled in the centre of the room.

"Behold," A boy she didn't recognize stepped forward. He was in the year above her. "The Slytherin initiation ceremony."

The crowd parted and she saw what was in the box. It was a snake, a poisonous one. Its body was pitch black and it was hissing at anyone who came near the box.

"That's a snake." Hermione pointed out. "Are you allowed snakes at school?"

The boy ignored her question. "All you have to do, to prove yourself worthy of being in Slytherin is stroke the snake...on it's head."

"And...every Slytherin does this? What about Zacharias, did he do this?"

"Leave it guys, she's too chicken. She doesn't belong in Gryffindor or Slytherin." It was Draco. He was sitting on the sofa, like he couldn't be bothered to get up and watch Hermione.

"No...I'll- I'll do it." Hermione stated.

"You will?" The group of people started whispering among themselves. Clearly, they hadn't been expecting that answer from her.

"Sure. I'll do it, but on one condition. You give me five minutes alone."

The boy laughed. "You aren't exactly in the position for making demands are you?"

Hermione smiled at him pleasantly, hiding the fact that her heart felt like it would beat itself out of her chest.

"The way I see it, you have two choices. Give me five minutes alone and watch me stroke a poisonous snake or... I'll let Snape know that you smuggled a dangerous and contraband animal into school. How many of you do you think will be expelled?"

The crowd fell silent, waiting for a decision to be made.

"Give her her five minutes." Draco ordered. The crowd dispersed immediately, apparently they were used to Draco giving them commands.

Hermione used to be scared of snakes and Hermione hated being scared of anything. Which is why, after she had discovered that Harry could speak Parseltongue in the second year, she asked him to teach her how to speak it too.

It had been tough for Harry, but Hermione was a good student and within a few years of regular practice, she was fluent. Not that anyone else knew that.

She leaned over the box and whispered to the snake in parseltongue.

 _Hello, I'm Hermione. I'm sorry about how loud these people are being, but I can help you out if you help me out._

The snake looked at her for a few seconds, as if evaluating her.

 _My name isss Ssssanya. What help?_

 _If you promise not to bite me and allow you to stroke your head for the satisfaction of these hooligans, I'll keep you with me and no one will bother you. Or I could set you free in the grounds if you wanted, as long as you don't bite anyone._

The snake seemed to smile at her. _Agreeeed._

"Your times up." It was Draco. The rest of the crowd followed him. "Are you going to be true to your word and touch the snake, or are you going to be a coward?"

She raised her chin defiantly. "I'll do it."

She wasn't a hundred percent sure that Sanya actually wouldn't bite her and the room was silent with baited breath as she reached her hand closer to the snake.

She stroked her head and Sanya seemed to let out a sound of content before slithering and wrapping herself around Hermione's hand.

"Are you guys happy?" Hermione asked the silent room. "Now leave me alone, I have homework. And I'm keeping her, just so you know." She told them before walking away.

Padma had convinced Blaise to skip class.

"Aren't you Ravenclaws supposed to be really uptight about things like skipping classes and education?"

Padma raised an eyebrow.

"Aren't you Slytherins supposed to be evil puppy killers?" she fired back at him.

He grinned. "Good point. House steroetypes suck anyway. Do you even know the number of crying first years we get because they're convinced that being in Slytherin is going to turn them evil?"

They were climbing their way up the steps of the astronomy tower.

"Where are we even going?" he asked Padma after a few minutes of silence where the only sound was that of Padma's laboured breathing.

"To the top." she panted.

"But why?" He climbed the stairs easily, taking two at a time.

"For experiments. I want to see if certain types of fireworks can attract unicorns out of the forest or not."

"Not that I have a problem with skipping classes, but was this really necessary? Couldn't we have gone later?"

"Nope, twilight is the hour of unicorns. Besides, this is all in the name of Science." she threw him a lopsided grin.

"Some would say its the hour of vampires." Blaise retorted.

"What? Don't be ridiculous, everyone knows that-"

'Muggle joke. Forget it." he chuckled.

"Look at Zabini, the Slytherin who tells muggle jokes." she teased him.

They'd finally reached the top of the Astronomy tower and Padma started tugging out firework after firework from her bag and setting them up along the edges of the tower.

"Ok, this is what we're going to do. I'm going to set off the fireworks and you're going to tell me if any unicorns come out of the forest and if they do, how far they come out from the treeline."

"Why can't I set of the fireworks and you measure the distances?"

"Whatever." Padma huffed. "You're such a child."

He lit the fireworks one by one while she squinted into the distance for a sign of unicorns. None appeared, at least not until Blaise lit a firework called "the Silent Whisper."

Padma grabbed at Blaise's sleeve and tugged hard. "There." she said, pointing at the treeline.

Two white unicorns had come out of the forest and were standing silently, staring up at the sky.

"Light another, see if they come further."

But the second Blaise lit another, the unicorns turned and fled back into the forest. The pair of them stood there, watching the fireworks fade against the twilight sky.

All of a sudden, Padma pulled Blaise by the shirt and kissed him while Blaise stood there,shocked into silence.

She pulled away after a few seconds and patted his shoulder.

"Don't worry, that was just an experiment, for science. We should just be friends." She beamed at him.

"What?" Blaise blinked in confusion.

"Nothing. We should go back downstairs before they lock the doors."

"They don't lock the doors."

"Yeah, they do,ever since a bunch of kids climbed up here at night a few years ago, they've started locking the doors."

Blaise tried the door but it wouldn't budge. " _Alohomora."_ he tried.

It didn't work.

"Don't you think they'd have thought of that?" Padma rolled her eyes. "We're stuck here for the night. Good thing I brought a blanket in my trust bag."

"Why do you carry a blanket around?"

She shrugged. "Be prepared- that's my motto."

Padma cast a spell to keep them warm and they huddled together on the blanket and counted stars and talked till dawn and the doors finally unlocked.

Blaise yawned. "I'm way too sleepy for class today. I guess I'm skipping a few today too." He shot her a sleepy smile.

"Me too. I wanted to work on my project anyway."

"Do you even know where the Hufflepuff dormitory is?"

Padma's laugh sounded louder in the stillness of the morning. "You weren't listening were you? I'm always prepared."

 **A/N: A HUGE thank you to my lovely reviewers. You motivate me to write more :* I really loved this ch. But my sis says I need to hurry the "Dramione" along. But its only ch 4 :( Your opinions?**


	5. Chapter 5- Challenges

"Granger." It was Malfoy, leaning against the wall. She wondered tiredly how long he had been watching her before she finally noticed that he was there. The rest of the common room was empty, she was the only one left working on her essay.

"It was your idea wasn't it? The snake? You wanted to scare me. **__Pseudechis porphyriacus.__** _" she_ murmured.

"What?"

"The common black snake or the red bellied black snake. It's found in Australia. I was wondering how you even managed to get it into Scotland, let alone Hogwarts. Did you even know how poisonous it was before deciding that I should touch it?"

She was angry now. She stood up, scattering sheaves of parchment to the floor and spilling ink across her the essay that she had been working on. She didn't pay any attention to it, knowing that she could easily remove the ink later.

Draco, to her annoyance,didn't even flinch. He didn't look scared of her at all. Which was actually pretty stupid of him, he was many things; but he was not stupid.

"I saw you talking to the snake. I heard you speaking parseltongue." Draco stated simply.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Hermione lied, fluidly.

"Of course you don't." He flashed her that irritating superior smile of his.

"If you're here to irritate me, please leave. I have enough work to do." She reigned in her temper but her exhaustion did nothing to help her self control.

"As nice as it would be to spend some quality time with you, Granger, I'm here to talk about the prefect patrol timings."

"Oh, right, that." She sat back down, straightening the ink pot she had tipped over and clearing up the mess with a flick of her wand.

He took a seat across from her and laid out a map of Hogwarts before snatching her quill from her and drawing out the routes the Slytherin prefects normally patrolled, his forehead furrowed in concentration.

Hermione watched him draw. She had never had an opportunity before to examine him when he wasn't surrounded by his group of friends. He looked surprisingly normal when he wasn't sneering or smirking at her. He looked as tired, she noticed the purple circles beneath his eyes for the first time.

"See something you like, Granger?" he asked without looking up from the map. She looked away quickly, realizing that she had been staring.

"My quill." she retorted.

"Where's the snake?" Draco asked, still looking at the map.

Hermione wasn't sure why she decided to answer. It may have been because she didn't really feel like fighting or because for the first time ever, Draco looked like a teenager like the rest of them.

"Gone." Sanya had requested to be set free in the grounds, promising that she wouldn't bite anyone unless she was attacked.

"Do you want to borrow my book?" Hermione asked suddenly.

"What?" Draco finally looked up from his drawing. "What are you even on about?"

"The Swathog... I learned how to catch it from a book. You can borrow it if you like."

"Are you drunk?"

"What?" Hermione asked, clearly affronted.

"Do you remember how today went? You embarrassed me in class and my friend's threw dung on you. Then I made you touch a poisonous snake, although, I didn't know it was poisonous at the time. But yes, that was my idea. You and I aren't even friends. Why are you offering me your book and why do you even think I'd want it?"

Hermione pondered for a minute. She hadn't really thought before offering, she just thought it would be a decent thing to do. She had forgotten temporarily about how horrible he was to her.

"You're under a lot of pressure from your father aren't you?" Hermione asked cautiously. Draco's face went void of any emotion it had contained before. It had clearly been the wrong thing to say and she tried to backtrack rapidly.

"Careful what you say next." Draco warned her quietly.

"That's why you were so angry today when I caught the Swarthog and you didn't. Well, that and the fact that you fell into a pile of poop."

She wasn't sure if it was a trick of the light, but she could have sworn she saw the corner of his mouth twitch.

"So do you want it?" Hermione asked again.

"Go through the routes and have them memorized before our patrol tomorrow." He got up to leave, "And I don't know how it works in Gryffindor, but niceness won't get you anywhere in Slytherin." He trained his pale gray eyes on her like he was trying to read her expression.

"You can leave the book on this table, I'll collect it tomorrow morning."

He turned and left without thanking her and she stared at the squiggly patrol routes he had drawn for a while, thinking.

Pansy was in business mode. She had gotten a letter from her mother that morning, demanding to know how hers and Draco's relationship was going. With all the house switching drama, she had almost completely forgotten about her boyfriend. Pansy knew how furious her mother would be if she told her that Pansy and her "pure blood, attractive and rich" boyfriend were on the rocks so she lied about it and assured her that everything was fine.

"If she likes him so much, she can date him then." She muttered to herself darkly, sending her reply away by owl. "It would save me a lot of hassle."

But her mother's letter had reminded her of her failing relationship and now she needed a way to fix it, and fast.

She pulled Draco aside on his way to the Great Hall.

"I have an idea." She told him, feigning excitement.

"Hey Pansy." Draco didn't look too enthusiastic to see her.

"I'm going to purposely sabotage the Gryffindor's house points." _This is a terrible idea. Wouldn't it just be easy to break the relationship off?...But mother would be furious_.

Finally, there it was, the spark of animation that she had been looking for in Draco's face. Nothing would bring them closer like a bit of Gryffindor bashing.

"But you'll have to work with me on this if you want us to pull it off successfully. You need to deduct as many house points from Gryffindor as you can, without anyone noticing, and I'll do my best to get myself into trouble. Weasley and I already lost fifty points for Gryffindor yesterday for making the classroom catch fire." _Which you knew about but didn't even bother going to the hospital wing to check on me._

"You'll get a lot of detention for this though..." Draco warned her.

"As long as you spend time with me later to make up for lost time." Pansy hated how she sounded. Sickly sweet and fake.

"Sure." Draco smiled at her before heading to his own Slytherin table while she went to the Gryffindor table. She took a seat between Ron and Harry, partly to annoy him and partly because she wanted his attention.

"We have prefect duties today, and I don't care what Granger did, I am not drawing up patrol charts on my own so today at one you are going to meet me in the library and we're going to do it together." She fixed him with a steely look. "Understood?"

Ron glared at her but muttered "Sure."

Pansy dug into the food in front of her happily. She'd done both of the things she'd wanted to.

She hadn't really expected anyone to talk to her and was surprised when the Weasley twins plopped themselves in the seats opposite her.

"Hey Parkinson." They said in unison.

She narrowed her eyes at them. "What?"

"We wanted to know if you'd come smuggle butterbeer and firewhisky into the castle with us." One of the twins said.

The Weasley twins were trouble. She was on the verge of saying no, knowing that they were probably up to no good but then she remembered that she was supposed to be looking for trouble.

"I'm a prefect." She said.

"We know." They said together. "That's why we're asking."

"Ok, I'm in." She said simply, smiling at them because she was happy that she was already on her way to losing house points.

Ron had stopped eating, and was listening to them talk. "You're joking. You can't go smuggle alcohol with them. Besides," he turned to his brothers, "You've never needed help before."

"We're trying to see-" Fred said.

"-if a Slytherin-"

"-can be turned into-"

"A Gryffindor." George completed.

Pansy watched them curiously, she had known that they went everywhere together but she didn't know that they completed each others sentences too.

George looked Pansy over. "We think she can. She's not one of the Unfixable ones, although she does have the added disadvantage of being Malfoy's girlfriend, and a git most of the time."

Pansy didn't bother protesting, she was a git most of the time. She hadn't lied.

"That's ridiculous." Ron said confidently.

"Want a bet?" Fred asked.

"I don't have any money." Ron lowered his voice. His lack of money was always a touchy subject for him.

"That's ok. We had something else in mind. If you win, we'll...what do you want?"

"Your box of fizzing whizbees, all your fireworks and one of your fake wands."

"Done. And if we win you have to... take Pansy out of a date."

Ron turned red. "What?" he asked at the same time Pansy said, "I'm literally sitting right here."

"We think that's a pretty fair deal. Besides, if we win, Pansy will be a much nicer Gryffindor by then."

"Again," she protested, "I'm sitting right here."

Ron turned to her, taking in her perfectly combed hair (to make up for the mess she had been the day before), her acne-less face (an anti acne potion she brewed every month) and her perfectly shaped, unbitten nails.

"Well, I could do worse." he said, shrugging.

"I still haven't given my consent to this." Pansy pointed out.

"You should." George said, "You'll get a date with our idiot brother, and you might actually make some proper friends. I noticed your dear Slytherin friends haven't even bothered trying to talk to you lately." he pointed out.

"True. When do we meet for the alcohol run?"

"At six. You can come too, Ron, if you want. Unless you're too busy being a prefect." Fred sniggered.

"Well...it's better than homework. I'll come." They'd never invited him along before.

Harry was sitting on the other side of Pansy but he was completely ignoring their conversation. He was staring at the other ginger in Gryffindor. Ginny was deep in conversation with Michael Corner.

She didn't look too bored, and she was twirling a lock of red hair around her finger as she listened to him. Harry couldn't tell if she was faking an interest in what Michael was saying, or if she was actually interested in his bragging.

He grabbed his bag. She probably needed saving from Michael's boringness.

"I'll see you all in later." He told the rest of the Weasely's surrounding him.

"Hey Ginny." he said, taking a seat opposite her and Michael.

Ginny, to his surprise, didn't look happy or even relieved that Harry had interrupted her conversation with Michael, in fact she looked a little...annoyed?

Harry was taken aback. He had known about Ginny's crush on him for years, although he ignored it. He wasn't even sure it still existed. He realized how presumptuous of him it was to think that she wouldn't be annoyed at him. Or that she even needed saving. Ginny was strong, she rarely ever needed saving and he loved that about her.

"I was just wondering if you were finally going to be on time for Quidditch practice for once in your life." he joked.

Ginny rolled her eyes. "I'm there before you. You're the one who's late."

"I'm the captain, practice only starts when I get there." He grinned at her.

She looked pretty that morning, a part of him wondered jealously if she had put in the extra effort for Michael.

"I've been wanting to talk to you about that-" Michael interrupted them and Harry turned to him, annoyance at being interrupted clearly plastered on his face.

"I was on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team when I was in that house so I think its only fair that I'm on the Gryffindor team."

"...There aren't any available places on the Gryffindor team."

"I was the seeker on the Ravenclaw team." he stated.

Ginny was watching the pair of them silently.

"All right, we'll have try outs then. For the position of seeker. You and me on the Quidditch field today at seven." He pasted a smile on his face, knowing he was risking his captaincy of the team. If he lost to Michael then Michael would become the new Gryffindor seeker for a year and he wouldn't be a part of the team. If he wasn't on the team he couldn't be captain.

"All right mate." Michael clapped him on the shoulder, said bye to Ginny and left the two of them alone.

"That was... ridiculous." Ginny finally said. "You're risking your captaincy."

"I know." His stomach was in knots just thinking about it. "But if he's a better seeker than me...then he deserves to be on the team. Its what's best for the team."

"You don't have to put _everyone_ before what you want." she whispered. "But you're right, its best for the team." She gave him a funny smile. "Be prepared. I've seen him play before. He's good. Really good."

Neville had been trying to get into the Ravenclaw common room for at least thirty minutes. He was in a rush, he had potions for his first class and he had left his book and bagful of potions ingredients in the common room by accident.

He had avoided answering any of the riddles before because Luna had answered them for him. But Luna wasn't here now, and he didn't have the slightest idea how to answer the question the eagle kept on asking him.

"What comes but never arrives?" The eagle asked him again.

"I don't KNOW." Neville yelled at the eagle before sinking to the floor in despair. All the other Ravenclaws were at the Great Hall and he didn't have enough time to go and fetch one to answer for him.

He hit his forehead in frustration. He was clearly not made for this house.

As if on cue, Luna appeared. "Hey, Neville. I came to see if the warglers had gotten you. Why are you on the floor?"

He scrambled to his feet. "Luna, thank god you're here. I need help, I can't answer anything it's asking me and it won't let me in if I don't answer."

Luna patted his shoulder comfortingly. "Dont't worry about it too much. Mr Aras," she pointed at the eagle, "will accept any answer as long as you learn something. You have to have some belief in yourself Neville. You _are_ good enough for this house or anything else if you put your mind to it."

"Ok...I'll try. What comes but never arrives...? Erm...I'm going to just guess. Death?" he asked the eagle.

To his surprise the door swung open.

"The answer is actually 'Tomorrow'." Luna told him.

"But then why did it let me in? I didn't learn anything..."

"Maybe you did." Luna's answering smile was enigmatic.

 **A/N: Thanks so much for leaving your reviews/opinions. It makes me feel happy to know someone is actually reading it and liking it :***


	6. Chapter 6- Fears

Draco had examined every inch of the book Hermione had lent to him for all the jinxes, hexes and curses he could think of. He frowned at it silently, pondering.

Whenever he thought of Hermione, he could feel a faint tingling sensation in his left cheek where she had hit him in his third year. It was no secret that Hermione hated him, he'd given her plenty of reason to. He didn't _hate_ her, but he couldn't tolerate her being an insufferable know-it-all and he was used to winding her up.

 _But why did she give me the book?_

He frowned at it again before finally deciding to touch it. He poked it, expecting something horrible to happen, but...nothing. It was just a book.

The pages were yellow with age, and the spine was thoroughly broken in. She had clearly read the book multiple times. He snorted, trust her to read a text book enough times to break the spine.

" _Property of Hermione Jean Granger."_ was written on the first page in loopy but neat handwriting. He had known her for years but he'd never known she had a middle name.

He riffled through the pages, frowning. Her loopy handwriting covered the pages, she'd made notes everywhere. Draco never made a single note in any of his textbooks, he tried to keep them as fresh as the day he had bought them.

He scanned through some of her notes and smiled. Some of them were actually quite funny. He hadn't expected her to have a sense of humour beneath all of that bushy brown hair.

He had just decided mentally that he would read the book after all when Hermione stumbled into the boys dormitory, looking furious.

"I don't know what you're playing at, Malfoy." she said angrily.

He racked his brains, trying to figure out what she was talking about. He hadn't teased her the entire day and had ignored both Harry and Ron because his mind was preoccupied over the possible curses Hermione's book might have contained.

"Don't act like you don't know. This was low, even for you."

"I have no clue what you're talking about Granger. Now quit blubbering and tell me or leave. This is the boy's dormitory." He replied, meeting the fiery anger in her tone with the cool indifference in his.

"The password to the common room. 'Inferior mudbloods.'? What kind of a joke is that? And don't you have any mudbloods in Slytherin?"

"Who makes the Gryffindor passwords?"

"The portrait that guards our tower. But how is that relevant-"

"Then why would the _Prefect_ make the Slytherin passwords? And you're a prefect too. And we have no mudbloods in Slytherin apart from you,at the moment. Salazaar Slytherin rarely accepts those who's blood is not pure. "

Hermione flushed red a bit when she realized her mistake but she was too proud to apologize.

"Well the only reason I asked is because you're a jerk enough to try and pull off something like this."

Draco didn't even protest.

"True. Have you gone through the patrol route?" he asked abruptly.

"Erm, yes. I wanted to speak to you about that too."

"If you're going to suggest some improvements to the route, don't bother, I'm not changing it. People would like you better if you stopped being a know-it-all."

"No- not improvements." she said hastily. "It's more of a favor. I was wondering if we could change some of my routes?"

He looked her over. She looked as if a lot depended on his reply, but was trying her best to hide it.

"Not unless you tell me why." He raised his eyebrows.

Hermione looked very much like she didn't want to tell him anything. But it must have been important to her because she drew in a deep breath and said-

"I'm scared of the dark."

Draco burst out laughing. "What?"

"I'm scared of the dark." she said defiantly. "And we're patrolling some of the unlit corridors. Could you just do those ones alone?"

"Aren't Gryffindors supposed to be brave?" he said between laughs. "Wait till I tell-"

Suddenly, Hermione drew out her wand and was pointing at him. "They say that you should never tell a Slytherin your weakness. Maybe I should erase your memory? Although...it would be a shame if I accidentally erased more than just our little conversation." Draco stopped laughing.

"If you weren't a mudblood," he said thoughtfully, "you would almost definitely be in Slytherin."

"Thank you." From him, that was a compliment.

"But I'm not going to change the route." He smiled evilly. "You don't need to worry though...I'll be with you."

Somehow, that didn't seem to make her feel better.

They had half an hour before they had to meet for patrolling and when they met in the Great hall, Hermione was a little alarmed to see that he was looking smug. She wondered what he had been up to.

"Let's go." was the first thing he said when he saw her.

They walked together in silence, their steps in sync. Hermione liked patrolling with Ron, he would talk about home and things that Fred and George had done or Professor Trelawny's newest predictions. His cheerful chatter would distract her from the stress of homework and the shadows where the torch light didn't touch.

Going on her rounds with Draco, on the other hand, was a completely different story. The silence was awkward and tense and she kept on hearing sounds.

Then they came to the first unlit corridor that she had been dreading. The corridor was so long that even in the daytime, it took half an hour to walk through. Whenever she had to patrol an unlit corridor with Ron, he would go first, lighting the way as he went. In return, she would shoo away any spiders he wanted her to.

She knew Draco would do no such thing for her, so she didn't even bother asking. They started walking down the corridor together.

"Scared, Granger?" he whispered.

"Shut up, Malfoy."

They walked again in silence. She ignored Malfoy, concentrating instead on making sure there was no one or nothing hiding in the shadows.

Suddenly a dark figure jumped in front of her, Hermione screamed. But then the figure pulled off his mask and she saw it was just Draco. He had bent over laughing.

"That wasn't funny." she said. She turned around to wipe away her tears without him seeing. "You're a git, Malfoy."

"You should have seen your face." he said between chuckles.

They walked together in silence again.

They started down another unlit corridor. Hermione was fuming that she had told Draco about her weakness.

 _This is actually my fault._ She thought angrily.

Suddenly there was a loud rattling noise from one of the unused classrooms.

Hermione turned to Draco, furious. "Learn when to stop Malfoy." But the look of confusion on his face told her that he hadn't planned this.

"I'll check what it is." Draco told Hermione. She waited in the corridor as he went to the classroom.

There was silence for a few moments, before a very surprised, "Father?"

Hermione went into the room to check who he was talking to. Lucius Malfoy was standing in the room with a look of white rage on his face.

"Wh-what are you doing here?" Draco asked Mr Malfoy.

"I've heard that your relationship with Pansy is going down the drain and now you're consorting with mudbloods. You bring shame to our name Draco. You are no son of mine."

Draco stood there. The blood had drained from his face. He looked terrified.

"So I have come to...fix the problem." Mr Malfoy turned towards Hermione, drawing his wand.

" _Ava-"_ he stated but Draco pushed Hermione to the floor. Something clicked inside Hermione's brain

" _RIDDIKULUS"_ she shouted.

Mr Malfoy vanished, replaced by a shouting Professor McGonagall.

"Miss Granger, you're a failure." McGonagall shouted. "You only scored seventy percent in your exams. You think we let mudbloods like you stay in Hogwarts with less than ninety-five percent? You aren't worthy."

It was Hermione's turn to stare, horrified. But Draco had understood that it was a boggart.

" _Riddikulus."_ he shouted and Professor McGonagall lost her voice and clutched at her own throat.

But the boggart had decided to target Hermione and it turned into other things she dreaded. Harry's body lay dead on the floor. Then Ron's. Then Ginny's.

She pulled herself together, pointed her wand at the boggart and with an emotionless voice said the spell. The boggart disappeared with a pop.

Neither of the two looked at each other. They had just seen each other's worse fears and they had nothing to say.

They completed the rest of the rounds in silence and headed back to the common room.

"Thanks for the book." Draco muttered, not looking at her.

"Thanks for not letting the boggart kill me." she muttered back.

They both hurried off to their respective dormitories, slamming the doors behind them.

Neville had had a bad day and now most of the Ravenclaws were ignoring him. He had been late for potions and had lost ten house points. Then in Defence Against the Dark Arts, Snape had decided to bully him by deducting another ten house points and it had continued until he had managed to lose thirty house points in a day.

While the Gryffindors were used to Neville and his loss of house points, the Ravenclaws were not. And with the exception of Luna and Hannah no one else wanted to talk to him (the Ravenclaws worked hard for their points and hated losing them). But Luna had gone to study for her Astronomy test so he was left with Hannah.

The only problem was, they seemed to have nothing in common. Hannah hated plants, she preferred to sit inside and read books, or listen to music. She wasn't a fan of Quidditch and she liked talking about things Neville had no clue about- like the Gobstone championship in 1965.

Neville liked listening to her talk, but after a little while, he couldn't help but feel a bored and more than a little befuddled. Until she finally said something that penetrated through his confused daze.

"So how often do you dance?" Hannah suddenly asked.

 _I'm going to tell her now. Time to come clean._

Neville gathered his nerves, opened his mouth to confess- and was interrupted. Luna was back.

"None of these charts seem to make any sense." said Luna, holding her map of the planets upside down.

She plonked herself down on a pouffe close to them and started tugging out her homework from her bag.

"I heard they got a new specimen of the rare Venomous Fishfly plant in Greenhouse six." Luna told him.

"Really?" Neville gasped. He'd read about it before. It was incredibly rare and supposed to possess powerful healing properties.

"Yep. We could go down and see it together in the weekend if you like. I wanted to check the plant for Flickerby's anyway. I've heard they infest the plant and I've never seen one before."

Neville smiled at her. She always knew how to make him feel better after a bad day. "I would really like that."

Hannah went back to talking about the Hogwarts gobstones club.

Harry was feeling as nauseous as he had before the Quidditch finals in his third year. He had been practicing on his firebolt for a few hours after class ended. But the nerves just wouldn't go. It felt like he had swallowed a whole box of frogs.

 _I shouldn't have agreed to this._ A part of his mind thought bitterly. Another part of his mind argued that it was only fair and it was best for the team if they got a better seeker.

 _If he wanted fairness, he should have gone to a Hufflepuff_ the part of his mind said again.

Michael arrived, Ginny was with him. She had come to watch them compete. Hermione had enchanted a normal ball to behave like the Snitch because they couldn't risk losing the actual snitch in the dark.

"Hey Harry." Michael greeted him with a cocky grin playing on his lips.

"Hullo Michael." he said, barely enthusiastic. "Ok the rules are simple, the first one to catch the ball becomes the new seeker. Although, if you do win," Harry added, "the team will have to pick a new captain and it might not be you."

"No problem. I think I've got this."

Harry didn't rise to the bait. "On the count of three then. One...two...three."

They both kicked off. Michael immediately began flying around the outskirts of the stadium, trying to spot the impromptu snitch.

Harry rose up high into the air, trying to see if he could spot it from above. Several times he thought he saw a flash of orange but it was gone before he could close in on it.

He saw Michael dive. He had spotted the snitch hovering near the ground. He pushed his firebolt to the limit, zoning in on the snitch. Michael was a foot from it. Harry tried to go as fast as he could.

He drew up level with Michael, both of them reaching for the snitch. But Harry got there faster and in seconds the little ball was clutched in his hand.

"Yes!" He shouted happily. He was so relieved that he had caught it before Michael.

Michael demounted his broom, his face full of anger. He tossed his broom over his shoulder angrily and stalked off the pitch.

"Congrats, Harry." Ginny called to him, running onto the pitch and throwing her arms around his neck. "That was really good."

Ginny's hair smelled of cinnamon and vaguely reminded him of Christmas at the Weasley's house where the smell of Mrs Weasley's cinnamon rolls would waft from the kitchen and spread around the house.

He felt a tingling sensation in his stomach that wasn't one of hunger. It was gone the second Ginny stopped hugging him.

"I better go and cheer up Michael." said Ginny. "He was really looking forward to being on the Gryffindor Quidditch team."

And just like that, she was gone. Harry watched her run off the Quidditch pitch, her flaming red hair dancing like fire in the night.

 **A/N: Heyo! Leave a review and make me happy? Please? Even if you don't, thank you for reading!**

 **Ps my laptop screen keeps flickering on and off. it still works for now, but if i dont update in a while, its because my laptop finally died ;-; and i'll update the second i get it back**


	7. Chapter 7- Missions

Pansy was actually feeling excited for the alcohol run. She knew she was a prefect, but she loved nothing more than partying and with alcohol, came partying.

She waited at the base of the marble stairs in the entrance hall, where they had agreed to meet. Either the twins and Ron were late or they had set her up and ditched her. She was expecting the latter. Which was why she was astonished when they all showed up together, five minutes after six.

"Where were you?" Pansy asked them.

"Sorry we're late. Filch decided he wanted to shout at us for something we did ages ago." The twins looked disgruntled, Ron just looked tired.

"You guys have a plan?" Ron asked his brothers.

"Not really." Fred shrugged.

"Do you at least know where we're going to steal the alcohol from?" he asked.

The twins shrugged.

Pansy stared at the pair of them incredulously, "I thought you guys were supposed to be adept at this kind of thing?"

"Well, we are. But we thought it was time we passed on our skills to -"

The twins looked them both up and down critically.

"-you two."

"So aren't you supposed to teach us how it's done?" asked Pansy sardonically.

"Well, that's the thing." said Fred. "You won't learn if we just _tell_ you how to do it. Which is why we're not going to. You'll have to figure it out for yourself. Hurry up, the party starts at eight. And people will be awfully disappointed if there's no alcohol..." he finished ominously.

They jogged up the steps of the Great Hall, ignoring their protests.

"So what are we going to do?" Ron turned to Pansy.

She scowled at him, " why do I have to come up with the plans? Can't you just figure one out for yourself. How much did Granger spoonfeed you?" 

He scowled back at her, his ears slowly turning red. "She didn't spoonfeed me anything, she just helped me out a lot."

"Too bad I'm not like that." Pansy snapped. "Let's just figure something out together and get this over with."

"Let's find somewhere private to talk about this first."

They entered the first unused classroom they saw, locking the door behind them.

"Right, let's brainstorm."

"We could ask one of the houselves for alcohol." Ron suggested. "They work in the kitchen and they're normally happy to give you anything you ask for."

Pansy shook her head, "They work for Dumbledore and won't give us anything that's against the school rules. Do you know how to transfigure water into wine?"

"No but we could learn." Ron said, looking hopeful.

"In two hours? And have enough wine for around twenty people?"

"You're right. That won't work."

"But we only need one bottle." Pansy gasped. "And then we can replicate them. The replication spell isn't that hard."

Ron's face lit up, before falling. "We still haven't got a bottle of wine to replicate. Although...I've heard Slughorn has a stache of oak matured mead..." 

"Weasley you're a genius. See, you don't need to depend of Granger to figure everything out for you. You're perfectly capable yourself." 

Ron's face turned a little red at the compliment although he tried hard to keep the pleased expression off his face.

"Now all we need is a distraction..." Pansy said thoughtfully.

Twenty minutes later Ron was poised in front of Slughorn's door, ready to knock. If Slughorn answered, Ron would take a puking pastille and tell Slughorn that he had accidentally drunk an old potion and he needed an antidote. Since Ron would be unable to name the potion, Slughorn wouldn't be able to make an antidote and would insist on accompanying him to the hospital wing while Pansy would duplicate the alcohol and steal it.

Fortunately, they never had to use the back up plan because Slughorn never answered the door.

" _Alohomora."_ he whispered, pointing his wand at the door and it swung checked that the coast was clear before signalling to Pansy who was waiting for his signal and they entered the room together, shutting the door behind them.

"Quick, we don't have long." Pansy hissed and they began searching for Slughorn's firewhisky or mead as fast as they could.

" _Accio alco-"_ Ron began but Pansy clapped her hands over his mouth.

"The bottles might smash, we have to do this manually." She told him and they began seaching through his desk.

"Did you hear something?" Ron suddenly asked, becoming as still as a statue.

"No... Just hurry up. We can't be caught going through a teacher's things."

"Got it!" Ron exclaimed triumphantly, watching Pansy replicate it. The spell seemed familiar to her, she performed it with ease.

"Let's go." They hurried to the door with the bottle of mead clutched in Ron's hands.

They had barely left the classroom when they heard Slughorn's jovial voice, he was talking to another student in the next froze, they had no where to hide the bottle.

They looked at each other frantically, they had seconds to act before Slughorn rounded the corner and caught them lurking outside his office with a stolen bottle of alcohol.

Pansy acted without thinking. She pushed Ron back against the wall, and pressed herself against him. The bottle was between them, hidden by their cloaks. She kissed him, tangling her fingers in his hair.

Ron seemed to be in shock because he didn't respond and stood there silently. At least until she tugged on his hair hard and he started kissing her back.

Slughorn didn't even glance at them for more than a second before striding into his office. Pansy stopped kissing him the moment Slughorn had gone and wiped her mouth. She glanced at Ron, his eyes seemed to have glazed over a little bit.

"Wh- why did you do that?" Ron finally asked her.

"Firstly because couples kissing all around Hogwarts are really common so no one spares them a glance. Secondly, because no one stares at or examines kissing teenagers and he wouldn't look close enough to see the bottle wedged between us. Now close your mouth, it's like you've never been kissed before."

They headed back to the Gryffindor common room to replicate the bottle. Neither of them spoke, Ron because he was still in shock. And Pansy because she had felt a tiny fizzle of electricity when she kissed Ron, and she had never, ever felt that with Draco.

Draco wasn't sure he could look at Hermione in the face again. He was more than embarrassed, he was worried. She had seen one of his worst fears, and she might try using it against him. Although... he had seen her's too, so that put them on equal footing.

He needn't have worried about her trying to talk to him though, she seemed just as eager to avoid him over the next few days as she was. She would eat at the Slytherin table in the mornings with her head hidden behind the Daily Prophet and ignore everyone around her, and she'd sit as far from him as she could during classes.

Draco had no problem with this, except for the fact that Proffessor Snape had noticed that they were avoiding each other even more than usual (Draco wasn't even bothering to tease her in class) and had decided to torture them by making them spend even more time together.

"Is this even a job for Prefects though?" Hermione asked suddenly, breaking the wall of stony silence that they had maintained for over a week. She wiped the sweat off her forehead.

Snape had assigned them the additional duty of drawing out route maps for each of the first year Slytherins so that they wouldn't be late to any more classes and lose house points, as well as organizing the auditions for the second year's dueling club.

Draco merely grunted in response, causing Hermione to glare at him.

"Why is it always either boiling hot or freezing cold down here?" Hermione asked, mainly to break the silence. "It's ridiculous." She tugged off her jumper and her shirt was pulled up slightly with it, exposing a small bit of pale skin.

Draco looked away hurriedly before she saw him looking. Something seemed to be caught in his throat and he had to clear his throat before speaking.

"What's the Gryffindor common room like then?" He wasn't actually interested in her answer, he was just trying to hide the fact that his cheeks felt like they were on fire.

Her face lit up at the question. "All the wall hangings and curtains are red and gold and the sofa's there are much comfier and Ron, Harry and I always sit in our favourite sofa in front of the fire, except when I'm doing homework." She said the entire thing at once without taking a single breath in between.

Draco had decided that he couldn't go without mentioning it any longer.

"Look, about that boggart-"

"It's fine." she cut him off. "I don't want to talk about it either, I knew how hard your father was on you anyway."

Draco's defences kicked in. "Why are you so scared of failing though?" He asked, ruder than he had meant to.

"It's absolutely none of your business." She stood up, gathering her papers. "I'll have these ready for you by tomorrow evening, you don't need to worry about it."

She stood up to leave, "Wait. Give me half, Snape gave the job to both of us, not just you."

Hermione looked utterly taken aback as she handed him half of the papers and Draco couldn't help but feel surprised at her reaction. Did Weasley not help her with the Prefect duties at all? Did Hermione like being self sufficient or was she just used to being let down by others until she had come to reply og herself for her needs?

Draco watched her head back up the stairs to the girls dormitory. He decided then and there that he had a new mission. He would unravel the mystery that was the mudblood he had been trying to hate since the day he met her.

 **A/N: I'm really sorry about the delay, I had a Harry Potter quiz to prepare for ( I came second!) and my college semester is starting :( Next ch will be better, promise.**


	8. Chapter 8- Pettiness

Harry watched Ginny and Michael from the corner of his eyes. They were standing in the corner, slightly away from the rest of the festivities in the Gryffindor common room and Michael was whispering in Ginny's ear. They looked far too snug for Harry's liking, although he tried his best to push all his jealous thought aside.

 _I'm not jealous._ He told himself. _She's Ron's sister and its only natural that I feel protective of her...Michael is a git anyway._

He turned to voice his opinion to Ron but Ron was staring blankly with a dazed expression on his face. His mouth was hanging open. Harry turned to see what he was staring at and saw that he was looking at Pansy. She was in the middle of the crowd and was helping Fred and George demonstrate their nosebleed nougats. The rest of the Gryffindors weren't too fond of her, but the fact that she had provided alcohol for their party as well as the fact that she was now almost friends with Fred and George warmed them to her slightly.

The sound of Pansy's high pitched laughter drifted over the heads of the crowd and reached them. Harry snapped his fingers in front of Ron's face, breaking him out of his reverie.

"What's the matter with you?" He asked Ron, grinning at his confused expression.

Ron shook his head, as if to clear it. "She kissed me." he stated simply.

"What?" He listened silently as Ron described what had happened.

"I wouldn't think about it too much, it obviously didn't mean much to her, don't overthink it. And anyway, she has Malfoy." Harry finally said after thinking it over for a while. "Hermione would probably be able to decipher Parkinson's emotions for you, but we hardly even see her anymore."

"You're right." Ron scratched his head and grimaced, "she isn't thinking about it, so neither should I."

Pansy was doing her absolute best not to look at Ron. The kiss had been on her mind for the last few hours, ever since she had gotten back to the Gryffindor common room. Every time it crossed her mind, she would flush and could feel her face heating up. She only hoped that the other Gryffindors attributed her red face to the effect of the nosebleed nougats and the alcohol.

When she did finally allow herself to glance at Ron, he seemed to be deep in conversation with "the Potter boy."

She hissed in irritation. _I'm over here, blushing to death because of some stupid kiss and it didn't even affect him?_

The thought irritated her more than she would have liked to admit. She was even irritated at herself for allowing the thought to irritate her.

She looked away, forcing laughter at the twin's antics.

 _If the kiss didn't affect him, then no way in Azkaban am I going to show him that it affected me._ She decided.

Finally the twins decided to take a break, there was a limit to the amount of blood they could lose in a day without having to go to the hospital wing. They pulled Pansy over to a corner, away from the crowd.

"You keep glancing at our dear brother." George observed.

 _Don't blush, don't blush, don't blush._

She blushed.

"Yeah I was checking if he'd started mapping out the patrol sheets for Prefect duties." she said defensively.

The twins both shrugged at the same time, it weirded her out when they did things like that. They didn't appear as convinced as she wanted them to and this only made her face twist into an even worse scowl.

"Just remember," said Fred, "the way to Ron's heart is through his stomach."

"I'm not trying to get to his heart." she spluttered, her face turning red, but the twins were gone; once again encompassed by a horde of their rowdy fans.

She glanced at Ron again, he wasn't looking at her. Angered, she stormed out of the common room in a huff. She'd show him what happened when she was ignored.

Draco was watching Hermione closely.

He noticed many things about her that he hadn't before, and he was happy to say he hated almost every new thing he noticed. He hated the way her hand automatically shot up when a teacher asked a question before she had even heard the entire question, he hated how she said most of her answers without taking a breath between sentences and he absolutely _loathed_ how she sucked on the end of her quill when another person was called on to answer a question; as if she was searching for a point to add to the answer.

But what he hated most about her were the things he might have liked if it had been any other girl. Things like how she wasn't afraid to fight for what she believed in (he'd seen her defend house elves in spite of the sneering Slytherins), how she made time to help out anyone who asked for it,how she scolded the wrongdoers without being intimidated by their sneers and their whispers of "filthy mudblood", how she could be nice one second and be snappy and sarcastic the next,and how her brown curls caught the light when she bounced in her seat to answer a question.

"Mr Malfoy." came Professor McGonagall's sharp voice, "if you'd be so kind as to return to our lesson from whatever dreamland you are in, perhaps you'd be able to demonstrate the raven to dinner plate transfiguration I've been talking about?"

Biting back a retort, Draco turned to his raven and tapped it, muttering " _laminarae"._ It worked, the cawing raven turned into a silver dinner plate causing Draco to blink in bemusement. He hadn't been expecting it to work.

He looked up, a pair of brown eyes were watching him curiously, although Hermione whipped her head back around when his eyes met hers.

"Excellent." said Professor McGonagall. "Take twenty points for Slytherin, but do not let me catch you daydreaming in my class again. The rest of you start transfiguring your animals."

She walked away and the rest of the class began tapping their own animals. Draco however, kept his eyes trained on Hermione. He couldn't help but smile when he saw that it took her three attempts before she managed to transfigure her raven.

Draco had to run to catch up to her after class. She was striding ahead of the rest of the class, as usual, trying to be the first to get to the next class and get the seat of her choice.

"Malfoy." She stated curtly, acknowledging his presence.

"Granger." He replied, just as curtly. "Snape wanted to see us in his office today at seven."

"What for?"

"How should I know Granger?" he replied irritably. "Maybe you should ask Professor Trelawney although I doubt that woman has made a single true prophecy in her life." He added scornfully.

Hermione's laugh surprised him, he hadn't expected her laugh to be so loud, he had expected her to have a breathy giggle like Daphne's.

He grinned back, happier than he had been a second ago.

They headed to herbology together with Draco doing his best to ignore how their hands sometimes grazed while walking and the little tingles that shot up his arm when they did.

When Hermione and Draco reported to Snape's office he seemed to be in a dangerously bad mood.

"Granger... Malfoy, I need you both to patrol the outskirts of the forbidden forest tonight. Apparently students have been...sneaking out." He sneered.

"You'll patrol from nine to twelve and then the Ravenclaw prefects will substitute you."

Draco opened his mouth to say something but was cut off before he could start.

"No arguments. I suggest you hurry up and I want the new patrol charts on my desk by this time tomorrow." He turned back to whatever he was writing, dismissing them silently.

"I have so much homework left though." Hermione sounded upset. They were hurrying back to the common room. Draco threw her a look, "Well, I have a life. So this forest patrol is a pain for both of us."

"When do you even do your homework, Malfoy? How do you submit it on time? If you're bullying first years into doing it, I'll report you." She said fiercely.

"Relaaaax. I don't bully first year Slytherins anyway."

"No. You bully everyone apart from the superior Slytherins, don't you?" She spat before storming away.

"Whatever, Granger." He muttered to himself as he watched her hurry away from him. He ignored the slight twinge he got in his stomach when Hermione shouted at him. No one else but his mother normally shouted at him. He wasn't used to it.

Blaise had quickly realized that being friends with a Ravenclaw was a lot different than he expected it to be. Padma skipped more classes than he did, finished her homework at the last minute and was absolutely terrible at charms. He hadn't thought a Ravenclaw could be terrible at any subject.

He watched her scrawl rapidly across her parchment. Her handwriting was huge, she was trying to finish the fourteen inch essay on a History Of Magic as quick as possible, with as little writing that she could. Even then, she was finding it difficult. Her brows were furrowed as she concentrated, a wisp of black hair fell across her forehead and her teeth worried at her bottom lip as she scribbled.

He hadn't even realized he'd been staring at her with his mouth slightly agape until she looked up at him.

"Your ink is dripping." She said simply. "I've got six inches left on this essay and I have no clue what to write." She closed her eyes in frustration. "Ask whatever you've been wanting to ask for the last ten minutes Zabini." She sighed, leaning her head back against the cold stone behind her.

They weren't in the common room, mostly because Padma insisted that that the cold air helped her think. Instead, they were sitting together on the spiral steps of one of the East towers. Blaise was freezing, but he would go wherever Padma wanted to. He loved spending time with her.

"No offense but...how did you manage to get into Ravenclaw? You're terrible at charms and you put so little effort into your homework, isn't that the opposite of what a Ravenclaw is supposed to be like?"

She smiled, with her eyes still closed.

"There you go with your house stereotypes again. There are more types of intelligence than academic intelligence. And besides, I'm pretty good at my unicorn experiments. I'm good at research. Some Ravenclaw's are good at inventing things. Some are good at learning things. We're all different."

She looked so pretty with the torchlight glinting off the strands of her shiny black hair that Blaise couldn't help himself. He leaned in to kiss her.

But she covered his mouth with her hand as her eyes flew open.

"Just friends, Zabini." She said calmly.

He ran his fingers through his hair and grinned abashedly. "Sorry, you're right. I should have asked. Hurry up with your essay, we're going to get locked out again."

"Can I just copy yours?" she moaned.

He let out a loud laugh. "Absolutely not. Now hurry up." She poked him with her quill and went back to her untidy scrawling.

Neville was sprawled across the floor for the seventh time that evening. He extended his hand and Luna pulled him back to his feet.

"You know, Neville, I think it's not you. I think it might be me who's terrible at dancing." She said serenely. " I keep on tripping you over my feet, sorry."

Neville grinned at her. He had convinced her after much cajoling and promises of going plimpy fishing with her to practice dancing with him. He didn't know anyone else who would have been nice enough to spend hours practicing the same five steps over and over again. What he hadn't anticipated though, was the fact that she would be just as bad, or maybe even worse,at dancing than him.

They were in the room of requirement which had provided them with an old record player.

"I don't think it's you, Luna. I think it's the music."

Neville had asked Hannah what type of dancing she liked and she had said the Waltz. He found it confusing and he really really hated the music.

"You want to change it? The Room has provided us with so many records to try."

"Sure, why not. You pick something. Can't be worse than this rubbish." He plonked himself down onto a beanbag.

She shuffled through the stacks of vinyls before squealing. Neville whipped around to see what was wrong, but her face was alight with delight.

"My mother used to play this to me when I was a child!" she exclaimed. She put it in the player and an upbeat tune filled the room. She pulled Neville to his feet and grabbed his hands and started spinning, laughing as she did so.

" _Now_ we're dancing." Neville laughed, twirling her around and jumping about like Luna was, waving his hands and trying to sing along to the song even though he didn't know the lyrics.

"You'll be all set for your dancing date this weekend if you keep this up." Luna yelled over the music. Neville nodded, laughing. Perhaps dancing wasn't so bad after all.

Pansy strode along the corridors, seething. How _dare_ he ignore her? How _dare_ he pretend that that kiss, as terrible as it had been, had made him feel absolutely nothing. Had his heart not raced like hers had? Did he not feel the same frizzle of electricity she had?

 _Maybe you're just not good enough for him._ Her mother's voice whispered in her head.

It only made her angrier. She debated returning to the common room and smashing the bottle she had clutched in her hands on his head. _Too violent._ She told herself.

 _Maybe I should go kiss Potter and see how Weasley feels about that_ she thought angrily before stopping in her tracks.

 _Kiss Potter? Make Weasley jealous? What am I DOING? I have a boyfriend._ She had completely forgotten about Draco. She had completely forgotten that she was supposed to be losing house points

for Draco instead of helping the Gryffindor's throw parties and smuggle alcohol.

She needed to get back on track. She needed to get Gryffindor in trouble, and fast.

 _Parties with alcohol aren't allowed_ …

She slipped back into the common room twenty minutes later, the party was still in full flow. A large group had gathered around a table, someone was playing the exploding snap challenge. Almost everyone was drunk. She grabbed another drink from the table and tried to blend in with the crowd, prepared for what was about to happen. What _she_ was about to make happen.

Five minutes later, it happened.

"HOW DARE YOU?" McGonagall's furious shout filled the common room, causing it to lapse into silence almost immediately. Bottles were hastily hidden, but it was too late. McGonagall had already seen, besides, she had a broken bottle clutched in her hand. Her fingertips white with rage. Pansy's bottle.

She had waited until Peeves was close enough to hear before loudly smashing her bottle on the floor. Peeves' shouts had attracted Filch, and a delighted Filch had immediately reported to a furious McGonagall that a smashed bottle had been found and the closest common room was Gryffindor's.

Pansy tried her best to act surprised when McGonagall showed up,seething with anger. But she wasn't quite fast enough. She didn't notice a pair of blue eyes trained on her from across the room. They had been watching her ever since she had slipped back into the common room.

 **Review if you liked it** :)


	9. Chapter 9- Negativity

Ron and Pansy were called into Dumbledore's office the next morning. They had all been in trouble. Every Gryffindor had been given a detention, and ten points had been deducted from each student who had been present at the party. For the first time in the History of Hogwarts, a house had managed to lose enough house points to reduce their points back to zero in one go. Needless to say, they were behind the other three houses, and every single Gryffindor she had met that morning looked depressed.

Pansy didn't feel depressed, she felt guilty and the guilt was making her miserable.

She stood in front of Dumbledore with her eyes lowered to the ground, unable to look him in the eye out of shame. Ron stood next to her, their shoulders were almost brushing. She could feel the anger radiating off him in waves. But he couldn't have known what she had done could he?

 _He must be angry that we got caught_. She reassured herself.

"Mr Weasley, Miss Parkinson," Dumbledore began gravely, "no doubt you're aware of the seriousness of your rule breaking. Although we are not aware of who procured the alcohol," _He definitely knows it was us,_ " you both failed to report the party to your housemistress. This leads us to question whether you are fit to be prefects. After much deliberation, we have decided that Miss Parkinson will be relieved of her duties. Mr Weasley you are lucky to still have your badge. You're free to go while I talk to Miss Parkinson."

Ron shouldered past her as he left and Pansy was left alone with Dumbledore.

"Contrary to popular belief, Miss Parkinson," he peered at her over his half moon spectacles, "your house was not chosen at random. The sorting hat believed that after Slytherin, Gryffindor was the next best house for you. But perhaps you should ponder over where your loyalties truly lie? Leave your badge on the desk before you go."

His smile was soft and full of regret and as she turned to leave the rubbed her tears roughly off her cheeks, angry at herself for crying.

Ron was leaning beside the stone gargoyle, waiting for her. She hoped he couldn't see the tear streaks on her cheeks. But Ron didn't seem to care. He looked angrier than she had ever seen him before.

"I know what you did," he snarled at her, "That was your bottle wasn't it. I saw you leave with a bottle in your hand but you weren't holding it when you came back." He laughed harshly and she flinched, "Once a Slytherin, always a Slytherin I suppose."

The look on his face as he left stopped her from calling out after him.

By the time Pansy made it down to the Great Hall for breakfast she felt absolutely terrible. A wave of relief crashed over her when she saw Draco also making his way for breakfast. He would make her feel better.

She ran after him, calling out his name but he didn't turn around to look at her until she tapped him on his shoulder.

"Draco- whoa, you look awful." His eyes were ringed by bruise like circles and his tie was off center. This might have not looked like much to anyone else, but Pansy had known Draco for years and he _never_ left the Slytherin common room looking anything less than perfect.

"Thanks Pansy." he drawled sarcastically. "I've been meaning to talk to you about something actually." he shifted from one foot to another, clearly uncomfortable.

"Could I go first though? I've been having the worst day."

"I think it's better I go first actually." he said warily. " I think it's best we...break up."

She blanched. "What?"

"It's not personal," he cut in hurriedly, "my mother wasn't happy when she found out you'd been transferred to Gryffindor and now...she found out about you losing your prefect badge, and she just think it's best..." his voice trailed off into a mumble.

"But how did she find out so fast? It only happened ten minutes ago. _Ah._ Your father told her." Lucius Malfoy was on the school's board. He would have found out even before she had. Draco's lack of a reply only confirmed her theory.

She smiled sardonically. She wasn't hurt, she'd known for a while that she and Draco were incompatible. She wasn't even sure if they were actually friends. What she was, was angry. He'd never been a good boyfriend to her, but she wasn't good at making friends and she'd just turned to him for comfort. Did he really have to break up with her _now?_

"That's fine." she said with a steady voice before whipping back her fist and punching him in the face. She heard a satisfying crack and strode away from him, wiping his blood off her fist as she went. She didn't look back.

Hermione and Draco had been avoiding each other ever since their row. Draco touched his nose tenderly. It was broken. His scowl only made his nose throb worse so he forced himself to keep his face expressionless.

"Granger." he said, spotting her on the stairs.

She took in his face with a quick glance, but didn't comment.

"Fix my nose."

She raised her eyebrows at him and didn't say anything.

"Alright, fix my nose _please_."

"That wasn't so hard was it?" Hermione asked smugly. "I hope Pansy hit you hard."

"How'd you know it was her?" his eyes snapped to her face.

She shrugged. "I saw this coming after she got transferred to Gryffindor. You're bleeding all over your shirt. Let's go back to the common room and I'll fix your nose."

"You probably deserved that punch though." she told him when they were back in the boy's dormitory together, everyone else had gone down for breakfast . He didn't argue with her.

"Hurry up, Malfoy, take the shirt off." she said impatiently.

"What? Why?"

"Because blood is hard enough to clean off and your shirt is white. Hurry up or I'll be late for class., don't be a wimp."

"I just wanted you to fix my nose" he muttered, but proceeded to fiddle around with his buttons. Hermione watched him for a few seconds, frowning, before throwing her hands up in impatience.

"Just let me do it." she walked over and concentrated on unbuttoning his shirt for him. She ignored the fact that she could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks and feel her heart thumping faster in her chest.

He tugged the shirt off without looking at her.

"Make sure my nose sets straight, Granger." His voice was husky.

"Shut up Malfoy." Her's was higher than normal. She pointed her wand at his face " _Episkey._ " There was a crack as his nose fixed itself.

"You deserved the slap I gave you in the third year too." She told him before turning away, her voice angry. "Clean your face and your shirt up, Malfoy." She tossed it at his head and he caught it.

"What? I thought you were going to do that." His voice let her know that he was joking.

"I'll break more than just your nose." was her cheery reply. Draco couldn't help but smile to himself as he watched her leave. She was definitely a fighter.

"Hey Ginny." Harry called gloomily as he walked onto the Quidditch pitch. He'd figured that some Quidditch would cheer him up and she'd probably had the same idea.

To his surprise, she didn't look unhappy at all. Her face was flushed and her eyes were bright. His spirits lifted a little just by looking at her.

"Why do you look so happy? Aren't you supposed to be upset about the house points?" He couldn't help but grin back at her.

"Michael's asked me to go on a date with him next weekend." she gushed happily.

"Oh, right." His grin slid off his face. "I'd forgotten that next weekend was Hogsmeade weekend. Have fun." he forced himself to sound happy. "I better go and practice."

He kicked off from the ground rose steadily into the air, but the higher he flew, the lower his spirits dropped.


	10. Chapter 10- Books

Pansy was surprised that none of the other Gryffindors were treating her worse than usual. In fact, some of them were actually being a bit nicer to her. Their collective misery seemed to have brought them closer together. But what really surprised Pansy was that Ron hadn't told anyone what she'd done.

She knew that if she had been in his position, she would have been telling everyone she could. She didn't understand why he wasn't.

 _Maybe he's just a better person than you are._ The annoyingly persistent voice in her head whispered. She supposed that she should get up to thank him, but she was having too much fun sitting by the lake and wallowing in self pity.

She was plucking out grass and repeating Dumbledore's words in her head when two people plopped down beside her.

"Blaise!" she exclaimed and tackled him in a hug. "I've missed you."

Blaise had been her friend for years, or as close to a friend as she could have. She knew that if he ever had to pick between her and Malfoy, he'd pick Malfoy.

"Hey Pansy." he ruffled her hair. "Long time no see. This house exchange thing's been taking up all my time."

"Yeah, don't you hate it too?"

"Nope." Blaise was looking past her head. It was on;y then that Pansy turned and noticed the other figure that had sat down next to her.

"Patil." Pansy said coldly. "What are you doing here?"

"She's my friend, Pansy." Blaise's voice was sharp.

 _He likes her. A lot._ She realized. She instantly softened her tone.

"You're the other student who got switched to Hufflepuff aren't you?" She glanced at Blaise and he grinned back at her, appreciating her effort at being nice.

"Yep. Anyway, we'll get straight to the point, we heard about the Gryffindor thing and we already know that you did it- don't look so shocked, Blaise knows you pretty well and I'm smart enough to figure it out. And we heard that Malfoy dumped you as well. So since Blaise won't shut up about how dejected you must feel right now and I can't tolerate his whining, we've come to offer you our help."

"I don't want reveng-"

"We're not offering you _revenge_. That's the Sytherin way of doing things. We're offering you help in making _friends_. Trust me you'll love your new house if you manage to make friends. This was all Blaise's idea." Padma beamed at Blaise proudly.

Pansy whipped her head around to look at Blaise. "Hufflepuff is getting to you, Blaise. I like it."

"Granger." Draco sat down in the seat across from her and threw a quick glance around the library to see if he could spot Madame Pince.

"I'm studying, Malfoy."

"Yes, I can see that but that assignment isn't due for another week."

"Malfoy, I saw you in the library working on it last Monday." She grinned broadly at him and he was stunned into silence for a few seconds. Her behavior had been off ever since she'd fixed his nose.

"Just come with me, Granger."

"What? No. I'm studying."

"Granger." He did his whiniest and most petulant voice. "Granger, I'll whine until you listen and you'll never get anything studied while I'm whining."

She huffed and slammed her books shut but Draco could see the smile tugging at her lips as she put her books into her bag.

 _She's so...fierce._ He thought to himself as he leaned back in his chair and watched her.

He snatched the bag out of her hands. "I'll be carrying that, thank you." His face dared her to argue with him.

"I'm capable of carrying it myself, Malfoy." she narrowed her eyes at him.

"I know you are. But my mother taught me manners. Just stop arguing for once in your life." he scowled at her.

She shrugged. "Whatever you want. It's pretty heavy anyway so this just benefits me."

They walked in silence back to the Slytherin common room. It didn't feel awkward at all, they were used to patrolling the corridors at night together. He led the way up to the boy's dormitory and knelt in front of his trunk.

"I have something for you."

"If it's another snake, Malfoy..." she sounded weary and he chuckled.

"Relaaax, Granger. It's something you'll like." He pulled out four books from his trunk.

"I had mother send me these from the Malfoy Manor library." He sounded slightly embarrassed and defensive. "because you lent me your book on the Swarthog and you fixed my nose and I don't like being in debt to anyone. You won't find these books anywhere else, they're pretty rare and I know you like reading so..."

His voice trailed off.

"Thank you..that's really sweet of you."

"I'm not _sweet_ , Granger." He looked disgusted but he sounded pleased.

She reached out to take the books from him but the second they touched her skin she felt a searing flash of pain and dropped them on the ground. She examined her hand, it had turned an angry red colour in the place she'd touched the book. She nursed her hand close to her chest.

"Here, let me see. There must be some protective enchantments on the books to stop mud- those without pureblood from touching them." She thought she heard a flash of disgust in his voice and wondered if it was aimed at her. She'd thought that they were past that by now. She didn't think that they were friends, but she'd hoped that he had at least begun to see her as an equal.

"I can fix it myself, Malfoy." she said, more sharply than she'd intended to.

"You don't need to do everything yourself, Hermione." He sounded exasperated and angry. It was the first time he'd called her by her name and he didn't even seem to have noticed. It had just slipped out.

She held out her hand and he took it, examining the angry burn. She did her best to ignore the sudden flurry of butterflies in her stomach. _It's only because I'm not used to him being so close to me._ She told herself.

When he took her hand and brushed his lips across her palm she couldn't stop her sudden intake of breath.

"Murtlap essence," he muttered, " and dragonhide gloves when you touch them."

His face was close to hers and he was still looking down at her hand.

She acted without thinking and pressed her lips on his. He widened his eyes but after a moments hesitation, he cradled her face with both his hands. The books lay forgotten on the floor.

When they finally pulled apart, Hermione's face was as red as Ron's hair from blushing so hard.

"I should go. Thank you for the books." she levitated them out of the room and hurried out after them, leaving him standing there in shocked silence.

 **Ayyy thank you all for the lovely reviews. Draco and Hermione finally kissed! Yay! Tell me what you think?**


	11. Chapter 11- Dates

The Hogsmeade weekend was looming upon them and while most of the students were looking forward to a day of gluttony and relief from studying, Neville was close to cancelling his date altogether. The happy glow he had felt while dancing with Luna had long since disappeared and was instead replaced by a mental list of things that could possibly go wrong.

"Don't be silly, " Luna had tried reassuring him, "we've practised and you've improved a lot. What matters is that you have fun."

Luna's reassurances hadn't done much to resolve his doubts and the shy smiles that Hannah kept shooting him when he glanced her way during classes did nothing to help.

"I have a bad feeling about the date. " Neville muttered to Luna and they were hunched over their Defense Against the Dark Arts homework in front of the fire in the Ravenclaw common room together.

Luna looked up from her essay and frowned at him.

"Just give it a chance?"

"Luna could you possibly do me a favor?" Neville felt his cheeks turn red in embarrassment.

"Could you possibly follow Hannah and I on our date? I'd feel better if you were there. "

Luna snorted in amusement.

"This is a terrible idea, but anything for you. "

This was how Luna found herself trudging through the snow behind them. It was twilight and she had spent the most of the day helping Neville figure out what to wear. The sound of laughter drifted over from them and she felt a pang of loneliness. She wished absentmindedly that she could join them. Stuffing her hands into her jacket pockets, she concentrated on not tripping over.

Neville wasn't having a very good time. The conversation felt forced and his laughter felt fake. He was doing his best to talk about what interested him but Hannah seemed completely indifferent when he talked about pixie eating plants or plants that could make you levitate if you sucked the nectar from their flowers. He quickly switched to asking her questions about her interests but it didn't help much because they had next to nothing in common.

When she finally started talking about quidditch, he latched onto the topic- finally, something he had some knowledge about.

Despite his best efforts, the conversation turned stale and he was overtaken with relief with they finally entered the crowded pub which was having a dance night.

He hadn't been there before and the place was a welcome respite from the chilliness outside. He glanced around and saw Luna enter behind them from the corner of his eyes. Her presence had the same effect a patronus had and the burst of warmth in his chest had nothing to do with the heat of the pub.

"Let's go dance." Hannah said immediately after they'd kept their things on some seats.

"Wh-already? Don't you want a drink first? " Neville was grasping at straws.

"We can drink when we're tired. "She beamed at him.

She led him to the dance floor and he followed, shooting helpless looks at Luna. Luna had ordered herself a drink and was stirring it, she didn't look too happy herself.

Hannah started stepping in time with the music and doing hand movements which didn't resemble Luna's dancing in the slightest. When Neville tried to relax and jump around like he had with Luna in th Room of Requirement, the awkward looks Hannah gave him quickly made him stop.

"Why don't you lead and I'll just copy you? " Neville suggested, at a loss. He could feel his ears turning hot and blinked away the watery eyes that always accompanied any embarrassment.

Hannah tried showing him the foot moments which resulted in him stepping on her foot twice.

"It's completely alright. Although I thought you'd danced before. " Her smile was still plastered on her face, but her voice had acquired a snappish tone.

"I have danced- just not like this. "

"It's okay. Just - try not to get in my way too much then. Here, twirl me. "

Neville had twirled Luna before and in his excitement at finally being told to do a dance move he knew, he twirled her so fast that her hand slipped from his grasp and she ended up crashing into a table, knocking the drinks onto the pale pink dress that she had worn. Hannah burst into tears and rushed to the bathroom with Neville trailing behind her and apologizing profusely.

"Just leave me alone please. " she said before fleeing into the girl's bathroom.

"Don't worry Neville, I'll sort it out." Luna patted his shoulder before following Hannah.

When she came out a while later, Hannah wasn't with her.

"We should leave, I think Hannah is too embarrassed to come out while you're still here. Let's go. "

Neville trailed behind Luna miserably as she ordered two drinks and collected them before heading to a bench outside. It had started snowing and they huddled together for warmth while sipping their drinks. Neville avoided looking at her. He didn't want her to see the shame and embarrassment clearly etched into his face.

"That was terrible. " he finally stated.

"Don't worry, you can always blame it on a Resonating Warbler. " The smile in her voice was evident.

"Thanks for coming with me. I owe you one. "

"Don't be ridiculous, but if you really want to make it up to me, you could buy me some cockroach cluster. "

"Done. Let's go. " Neville felt better already.

Honeyduke's was mostly empty, most students had come and dome their shopping in the afternoon; only the elder students were allowed out so late.

Neville spotted Harry engaged in an intense conversation with Hermione and they picked out candy together. He headed straight to the back of the shop where the cockroach cluster was kept with Luna.

"Hey look, they have new flavors of Popping Knots. I love those."

"I'll buy you some." Neville offered while she popped one into her mouth. Hey eyes lit up.

"Green Apple. Yum. Here try one. "

Neville wasn't sure what came over him. He leaned over and kissed her.

Their eyes were both open, her's widened in shock and his because he'd startled himself too much to remember to close them.

When he finally pulled away, Luna had dropped the bag of cockroach cluster onto the floor and they stooped to pick them up. When they walked back to the castle together, the conversation flowed between them easily. If not for the fact that their fingers were intertwined, it was almost as if nothing had changed.

Harry was glad that he was finally able to spend some time with Hermione. They hovered among the shelves at Honeyduke's and picked out candy for Ron. He'd stayed back at Hogwarts instead of coming with them - something that was highly unusual for Ron to do. But then, he'd been acting off for the last few days. Picking at his food instead of shoveling it into his mouth, and scrawling on his parchment with enough force to tear it- like it had personally offended him.

"Ginny had her date with Michael today. " Hermione began conversationally while adding some Fizzing Whizbees to the bag.

"I heard. " Harry said grumpily , shoving more sweets into the bag. "I don't know what she even sees in him. He's annoying."

"Well, he is incredibly smart, and quite a good quidditch player. Not to mention he's friendly and helps out the first years when they have any problems understanding anything. "

Harry looked even more sullen than he had a few minutes ago, which was a feat in itself.

"So how long have you liked Ginny? Oh, come on, you're not really hiding it are you? " She added when he started to splutter at her.

Harry shrugged. "Doesn't really matter anyway, does it? She likes Corner. Even has another date in the works from what I've heard. "

"I kissed Malfoy. " Hermione wasn't looking at Harry, she was staring determinedly at the shelves.

"What? " Harry spun Hermione to face him by her shoulders. "Hermione he's one of Them. " Harry hissed at her so no one else would hear.

"Don't start with that nonsense again." She snapped. "You have no proof. And you've been saying that for years. And anyway he saved my life. "

She told him briefly about the boggart but he still looked dissatisfied.

"Well he's not going to try anything in Hogwarts, he's not that stupid. Just... Be careful."

"Don't worry, I always am. And it won't be happening again anyway. He's been avoiding me. Should have known he drew the line at kissing mudbloods."

She laughed, somewhat bitterly and they shifted the topic to Ron's strange behavior.

Padma, Blaise and Pansy had declined going to Hogsmede and were instead taking advantage of the empty classrooms to try and teach Pansy how to make friends.

"For Merlin's sake, Pansy, it's not that hard. This isn't working, why don't you just try apologizing sincerely next time you see Ronald." Padma said exasperatedly.

"She doesn't do apologies." Blaise cut in before Pansy could speak. He was leaning against the wall with his arms folded loosely across his chest and he'd been watching the whole thing with amusement.

" I don't understand how you can be so bad at making friends though. Or at being nice. Haven't you ever been nice to anyone?"

" I can be nice. " Pansy protested. "I just don't see the point. It's lying. I'm not a 'nice' person. I'm a sarcastic snarky person and I like who I am. And I've never had to make friends before. I've had the same set of friends since childhood. "

"Well it's not working out very well for you, is it? " Padma snapped, clearly annoyed by the lack of progress.

"Has anyone tried being nice to you though? Just try being friends with them. " Blaine suggested.

"Well there's always the Weasley twins... " Pansy suggested.

"This sounds like a disaster in the making." Padma wailed and covered her face with her hands.

" Come on, " Blaise chucked, "how much worse could this get? "

 **A/N: thank you all for the lovely reviews. You make me smile :) and I sincerely hope that this story makes you smile too. Have a great day.**


	12. Chapter 12- Binding

Draco Malfoy was furious. He had been for the past few days. He'd been slamming doors, stabbing at his food and shooting death glares at everyone around him. Everyone had caught onto the fact that he was angry-it was hard not to- and were avoiding him like the plague. He'd been deducting house points ruthlessly from anyone who had attempted to talk to him.

Hermione had seemed irritated too. He wasn't sure why, and he was trying hard not to care. She'd also been avoiding him, which bothered him even though he'd been avoiding her as well. They hadn't had any contact since the kiss. At least, not until Hermione sat down in the cushy chair opposite him, folded her arms and glowered at him for a full five minutes before he finally gave up and looked at her.

"What? " he spat out the word.

"I don't know, Malfoy. Why don't you tell me? "

"If you're going to waste my time talking about that ki-"

"No, forget about that. I wanted to know how you've managed to unfairly deduct over 200 points over the last 3 days."

The words stung him. _He_ had wanted to be the one who dismissed the kiss. It was always him who brushed the other person off, not the other way round. He wasn't used to being hurt.

"Because they deserved it. " He turned back to his book, dismissing her presence.

"Really? Right. Well I have a written complaint against you. Signed by all the first years you deducted house points from along with the reasons you deducted them. Since when is 'looked at me funny' a valid reason to deduct points? "

The common room was empty, the Slytherins had collectively decided that it wasn't worth risking losing more house points by staying in Draco's vicinity.

"He did look at me funny. " Draco stated flatly. "Like he was questioning my authority."

"I'd question your authority too if you acted like such an idiot all the time."

They were both standing now, glaring at each other; Draco's book lay forgotten.

His eyes flickered down to her lips and the urge to do something, anything, rushed through him.

"I'm going to bed. " He snarled at Hermione.

"Good, everyone prefers you when you're asleep anyway. " she retorted. She strode away before he could get the last word, a faint smile of satisfaction lighting up her face.

She hadn't expected to have to deal with Malfoy again for another few days so she was displeased when the next morning she was held up on her way to class by a blockage in the corridor caused by him.

"What's going on here? " she asked sharply, taking in the scene. Four angry looking Ravenclaw seniors stood facing Draco. Their shoulders were hunched and their hands clutched at their wands. Draco looked at ease, like he usually did, but only his grip on his wand betrayed the fact that he was expecting a fight.

"Nothing I can't handle, Granger." he said calmly.

"Malfoy thought he'd deduct house points from us for 'looking too sleepy' so we thought that maybe we should... Teach him a lesson to wake us up". The largest Ravenclaw boy had been the one to speak.

"Was that a threat, McLain? " Hermione asked coolly. She recognized him as a member of the Arithmancy enthusiasts club.

"Yes." A girl stated. She looked bored with the ongoings already.

" You want to fight two prefects in the middle of the corridor? Really? Aren't you Ravenclaws supposed to be smart? " she asked incredulously.

She saw Draco running his fingers over his wand from the corner of her eyes.

"Well the way I see it, if he gets scared enough, it'll save us from losing a lot of points in the future." McLain said.

"Well when you put it like that... Expelliarmus! " she took a moment of pleasure to appreciate the looks of surprise on their faces. She had caught them off guard. She turned to Draco.

"How many housepoints did you deduct? "

" Ten each. " he looked annoyed, he had clearly been looking forward to the fight.

"I'll deduct another 10 each for threatening prefects then. " She smiled pleasantly at the Ravenclaws before tossing the wands back into their hands.

"I'll deduct another 20 each if you actually fight. "she added. "Which we both know is reasonable. "

She strode away from the Ravenclaws with an angry Malfoy striding after her.

"What was that? " he snapped at her.

"Firstly we're late for class, secondly do you really want to yell at me in the middle of the corridor? "

He pulled her into a nearby empty classroom, locking the door behind them.

"I didn't need your help. " he spat at her.

"Okay. " she stated simply.

"That's it? Okay? That's all you're going to say? "

"I don't have time for your temper tantrums right now, Malfoy. I don't want to be late for class. "

A look of pure incredulity passed over Draco's face and he stared at her for a beat of silence. All of a sudden he was kissing her. His hands were on her waist, her back was pressed against the door and her hands were clutching at his silky hair. She felt like she could finally breathe for the first time in days. She felt as if everything would be alright and their mess wasn't unfixable.

But he pulled away and that feeling disappeared like a bubble being popped. He shouldered past her, unlocking the door and rushing out.

Hermione was late for class, and not once, during the lesson, did he look at her.

There was only a week left before the Christmas holidays began and Slughorn had yet to mention the fact that Ron and Pansy still had to take their week's detention. They were both secretly but fervently hoping he'd forgotten about it. Now that Pansy was no longer a prefect, Potions was the only class in which they were forced to spend time together.

The potions class had just ended and the students were slowly packing away their books; it was cold in the dungeons and no one was eager to leave the warmth of their cauldron's fire. Slughorn pulled them both aside before they could leave.

"You'll both report to my office at 7 for your detentions. Don't grimace at me Mr Westley, I haven't forgotten. It would be hard to forget after what the pair of you did to my classroom. "

Which was how they both found themselves in the restricted section of the library at 7:30 that evening. They had been expecting a boring detention like writing lines or cleaning out cauldrons, but what they received instead was much worse- the had to go through the potions cupboard records of the last 500 years and write down which ingredients weren't used anymore and which potions they'd been used in.

"It's for a project of mine" Slughorn had explained jovially.

The work itself was tiresome and involved searching for each ingredient in the current potions stock(which had more than 2000 ingredients) and then researching the properties of each. To make matters even worse for Pansy, Ron was continuing to staunchly ignore her and she'd resorted to answering her own questions out of boredom.

"Why is the potions cupboard stock records in the forbidden section of the library anyway?"

"Probably because it's so boring even Filch doesn't want to keep it in his office. Or, for some reason people think that the records are valuable. " She made a noise of mixed disgust and frustration.

Ron was still steadily ignoring her. Abandoning her work, she got up from the table and began to read the titles etched onto the spines of the books around them before finally pulling a book out of the shelves.

"Forbydden Magyck of the 1500's" she read aloud. Ron didn't even glance her way.

She began flick through the pages absentmindedly. "A binding spell? Seems like a sort of lame spell to be forbidden. Sounds lame too- Bindis windis? Who came up with that?"

The smirk was wiped off her face as a hot flash of pain in her palm made her drop the book at Ron's feet.

He glared at her before stooping to pick it up.

"Could you be quie- OW" he dropped the book too, clutching at his own palm.

"Stupid book. " he muttered, picking it up again and shoving it into a random shelf.

"Let's just go back to the common room" Pansy suggested, "Slughorn will never know. "

Ron grunted at her, clearly annoyed, but got up and follow her. They walked to the common room together in uncomfortable silence.

Pansy was relieved when they both parted ways so they could go to their respective dormitories.

"Night" she murmured, not expecting a reply back. She began to climb the stairs to the girl's dormitories.

The silence of the common room was broken by Ron and Pansy's collective howls of pain as their hands began to throb painfully. Pansy fell to her knees from the pain, while Ron clutched at the wall for support.

He looked down at his palm, a large black cross was burned into his palm- the symbol of a binding charm.

He looked at Pansy, horrified.

"Did you... Did you bind us together?"

 **A/N: leave me a review if you want me to upload faster :) and have a great day**

 **Ps could you please leave me writing tips? I'm trying to improve**


	13. Chapter 13- Unmade and Made

The Gryffindor common room was in an uproar. A crowd had gathered to witness the screaming match and Fred and George were happily making bets on who would stop screaming first. They had been going at it for more than half and hour and Ron was as red in the face as his hair was. Pansy had knocked a pile of books off a nearby table and had tipped over a chair in her anger. They wouldn't stop blaming each other.

"Just go to the Hospital wing already" an annoyed looking senior finally yelled. The argument which had roused people from their beds had been amusing at first but had quickly turned stale.

Still red with rage, Ron stalked outside and Pansy ran after him, not eager to feel the pain the charm inflicted when the distance between them became too great.

"Don't worry," A Gryffindor called out behind them as they left, "Madame Pomphrey can fix everything. "

It turned out that Madame Pomphrey could _not_ fix everything, as she informed them, annoyed when they couldn't remember the spell, the name of the book, which shelf Ron had kept the book in, or even the section of the Restricted Section that they had been in.

"I could figure out how to undo the charm, but it'll take a while. Without knowledge of the spell used, it could take up to three weeks. I could cause the charm to become permanent if I'm not careful. "

She frowned at the distressed looks on their faces.

"I think you should go see Dumbledore in the morning. Till then, sleep in the hospital wing. The pain will be less, the closer you are to each other. "

Ron refused to look at Pansy as he stalked off to one of the empty beds. He'd just lay down and closed his eyes when he felt someone poking his cheek. His eyes flew open to see Luna snorting in amusement and Neville's worried face looking down at him.

"Is it true that you and Pansy are bound together?" Neville asked.

Ron glanced at Pansy- she'd taken a bed two beds away from his and her back was towards him. The tightness of her muscles told him that she was still awake.

"Yeah." he grumbled. "Hey I didn't know you two were dating." Ron exclaimed, staring at their conjoined hands.

"Oh we're not, we're just friends." Luna interjected before Neville could speak. A quick glance at Neville's face told Ron that he wasn't expecting that answer.

"YOU TWO, IT'S PAST VISITING HOURS".

Madame Pomphrey's shriek interrupted their conversation before Neville could reply as she shooed them out from the hospital wing.

As soon as they were out Neville pulled his hand from Luna's.

"Just friends? What about all the stolen kisses? And the handholding? Friends don't...friends don't do that to friends. I thought we were together."

"I never said that we were together though. I just thought that this was... " Luna didn't know how to finish the sentence.

Neville shot her a disappointed look. "I thought that you were different, but you're just like everyone else. I think it's best we talk after the holidays. "

He hurried away from her, not wanting to hear any more.

Patrols had been hell for Hermione recently, especially since she and Draco had kissed. They seemed to have lost whatever progress they had made in their relationship and were now back to being cold to each other.

"Malfoy stop." Hermione grabbed his wrist, pulling him to a stop but he yanked it away like she'd scalded him.

"What?" he asked warily.

"I've had enough Malfoy. We're always fighting and then ignoring each other, then talking and then fighting again. I'm tired of it. So either we're friends, proper friends, or we're nothing to each other. And if we're nothing to each other, then just stay away from me, because I don't know what we've got going on here but I'm done with it. So just decide."

Draco hesitated before sticking out his hand. She shook it, grinning at him.

"Friends? "

"Friends. "

"And now that we're friends you will not believe what happened that day in Slughorn's class... "

The sound of Hermione's laughter echoing in the abandoned corridor did nothing to ease the twisted feeling in his stomach which was telling him that he had just done a very, very bad thing.


	14. Chapter 14- Invitations

"You'll have to stay with each other during the holidays."

Ron wasn't sure what he'd been expecting Dumbledore to say but it hadn't been that. The idea of having Pansy in his home, and her staring in disdain at his belongings combined with Dumbledore's semi amused expression was enough to make him turn red.

"She's not staying with me. " he protested loudly, causing Fawks to let out an indignant squawk.

"Very well then, I'll write to Mrs Parkinson and tell her to expect you at their manor during the holidays. Till then, stay close to each other and you'll be fine. "

He turned back to his work, clearly dismissing them.

"I'm not sorry." Pansy said coldly to Ron and soon as they'd left his office. "It was an accident and I have nothing to apologize about."

"Really? Nothing to apologize about? In that case I have nothing to say to you."

He started to stalk off to emphasize his anger, which would have been more dramatic had the flash of pain that racked their bodies when he'd walked 10 steps away from her not sent them both tumbling to the floor.

"I don't care if you have nothing to say to me," Pansy grumbled, struggling to get off the floor, "if we're stuck together then I'd prefer it anyway."

If the binding situation wasn't bad enough for Ron, he discovered at lunch that Harry and Hermione were going to be staying at the Burrow for the holidays anyway, even though Ron wouldn't be there.

"Don't look so sad" Harry whispered to Ron from the corner of his mouth. "Ginny's invited Michael Corner to visit during the holidays so we'll be stuck with him too."

Ron looked considerably happier when he heard this.

It might have been the last day before the break but the Professors weren't cutting them any slack.

Blaise leaned upon his hand as he watched Padma scarf down her breakfast while trying to complete as much homework as she could.

"Blaise you're staring at me again. " She hadn't even looked at him lately she'd started being able to sense when he was looking at her. To be fair, he did it an awful lot.

"Ugh just make yourself useful, you feed me my porridge and I write. Teamwork."

Blaise however, didn't feel a separate pair of brown eyes boring into his back as he laughed and stuffed spoons of porridge into Padma's mouth.

He was pulled into an empty class room the minute he left the great hall. Padma was still trying to finish her essay.

"Padma? " he asked confused. "Oh. You must be the twin sister."

His eyes quickly scanned her face and registered the differences between the twins. Parvati's face was thinner, she was Skinnier than her sister. Her eyes were the same shade of brown but while Padma's were usually dreamy, Parvati's shone with a fierce determination.

"So how long have you been in love with my sister, Zabini? "

For a few moments, Blaise was lost for words. He recovered quickly.

"Did you stretch before you jumped to that conclusion?" he asked coldly.

"Oh drop the act" she snapped back, "I'm trying to help you. And anyway you're not even hiding it. I thought slytherins were supposed to be sneaky."

Blaise's expression changed like a mask dropping off his face.

"I don't want to talk about it."

Parvati's look was withering. "Suit yourself. I'm offering you a solution anyway. If you pretend to be my boyfriend, jealousy would make her snap out of her denial pretty fast. "

"Thanks for your help but.. That's kind of messed up. "

"Listen" she said fiercely, "I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing it for her. She's been afraid of emotional intimacy ever since her best friend died years ago. You're her only chance at fixing this. But if you can't pull your head out of your ass long enough to help someone else, then leave it."

She began to stride away.

"Wait. I'll do it. And, how did her friend die? "

"Okay we'll tell her we've been seeing each other after classes today. Oh and, you'll be coming to our house in the holidays. The adress is written here. "

She completey ignored his last question.

Shoving a note into his hands, turning to look at him one last time before she left, "and please, for her sake, don't be an idiot about this. "

Padma was sitting at the Hufflepuff table in the Great Hall when Blaise and Parvati approached her.

She was ignoring her food for her book again, and Blaise forgot to breathe for a few seconds when she finally glanced up from her book and smiled at him. She looked exhausted.

Her smile vanished as soon as she saw their interlaced fingers though.

"What's going on?" her voice was a mixture of cold and suspicious.

"Blaise and I have been dating for a while now and we thought we'd finally tell you. Aren't you happy for us? You don't look happy."

"When did this begin? "she demanded, narrowing her eyes.

"A few weeks ago. It's because of you really. I thought since I liked one Patil sister so much, I was curious what the other was like. And then we... Just hit off. "

He plastered a smile onto his face.

"Right. " Padma's eyes were flicking from Blaise to her sister.

Parvati stood on tiptoes and pecked Blaise on the lips before smiling angelically.

"And since I like him so much, he's going to come over to our house during the holidays. You won't have a problem will you? Since you're both such good friends?" she smiled sweetly.

"No. None at all. If you excuse me I have to go." she grabbed her book and hurried off.

The second she was out of sight Parvati dropped Blaise's hand.

"Please, don't kiss me again. " Blaise said shortly.

"As if I wanted to, you smell of peppermint. I hate peppermint. Now stop being such a whiny baby. "

"I like your sister more. " he called after her as she left.

 **A/N: so sorry about the last two filler chs . I'm saving all the things that happen in the holidays for the next ch so I hope that one makes up for these :(**


	15. Chapter 15- The Parkinsons

The ride to King's Cross Station was nothing if not awkward.

Ron had refused to sit in a separate compartment with Pansy so she was sitting in their compartment with them. Fred and George had also joined them, they'd seemed to have taken the oddest liking to Pansy. But even their jokes couldn't make her laugh. She'd receded back into her shell and spent most of the journey staring out of the window.

Hermione had dragged Malfoy into the compartment too, and after a warning to them all to be civil to him, Harry was attempting to make small talk with Draco, who looked uncomfortable and out of place. Fred and George ignored Draco except from giving him the occasional murderous glare and Draco and Pansy were both ignoring each other. Ron spent most of his time ignoring Pansy and talking to Hermione as she updated him on the Malfoy situation.

"So you're actually friends now? And you kissed? " Ron looked more than slightly grossed out.

"Yeah but I guarantee it won't happen again. Not after how he reacted after we kissed."

"If you're so sure he doesn't want to touch you because you're a mudblood then why even bother trying to be friends with him? "

Hermione was taken aback by that, and actually had to think for a minute. Ron usually saw straight through to the heart of the matter.

" I don't...know. I don't think he's a bad person really. He has his flaws. I think I'm trying to fix him. "

Ron snorted at that. "You know what they say about fixing a broken wand. You'll only break your own. "

The train ride was beyond awkward for Draco- it was torturous. He wasn't having such a bad time debating with Harry about quidditch, he was actually enjoying the argument. But he could feel Hermione sitting on the other side of him, her hand, inches from his. The urge to reach out and take it was almost overwhelming. But a pit of worry was building in his stomach. He knew he shouldn't be sitting in the same compartment as Gryffindors, debating quidditch with the Boy Who Lived. And as the debate got louder, so did the voice in his head.

 _My father will hear about this my father will hear about this my father will hear about this._

He finally got up. "Excuse me," he said, shoving his way out of the compartment. "I'm sorry, I can't stay here. I'll see you later." His eyes were fixed only on Hermione.

Instead of going to another compartment he headed for the bathroom. Locking the door and clutching the sink he retched, vomiting out the little breakfast he'd had.

The line still rang through his head as he closed his eyes and thought about Hermione's brown eyes. _My father will hear about this._

Ron wasn't sure what he expected to be waiting for them at King's Cross Station. A carriage maybe. Or maybe an entourage from the ministry. He'd even wondered whether Minister of Magic himself would show up, he knew Pansy's family had friends in high places.

What he was not expecting however, was nobody to be waiting for them at all. He was so used to warm welcomes home from his mother that he hadn't realized that some people weren't as lucky.

He felt a twinge of pity for her before quelling it with the memory of what she'd done at the party.

"No welcome? " he asked Pansy, too surprised to remember he wasn't talking to her.

"No, we're on our own. The car will take us home." she said shortly.

She led the way to a sleek black Sedan, while Ron thought of the old Ford Angelica his family used to own and he shrunk a little in his seat.

There was no one to welcome them at her house either. Ron glanced around, taking in the inside of the huge house. The Parkinson's were obviously very proud of them being sorted into Slytherin- the house was filled with jade ornaments. He looked into the next room, careful not to stray too far from Pansy.

A hanging chandelier was clearly the centre of attention with cream coloured sofas arranged in a square around it. Tapestries hung from the walls and a picture of a coldly smiling woman hung above the fireplace.

"Letitia Parkinson" Pansy said quietly, seeing him looking at the painting, "the discovered the properties of the meer flower and was awarded an Order of Merlin, third class. My family is quite proud of her. Lets go."

She began to tug her suitcase up the grand staircase.

"Don't you have a house elf?" Ron blurted, his surprise overwhelming his desire to avoid speaking to her.

" We do. But I prefer to do my own work."

Ron was wondering how many more surprises lay in store for him when she pushed open the door to her room. It was decorated a bright yellow, in stark contrast to the rest of the house.

"It's my favorite colour" she explained when he didn't say anything. "My mother can't come in here, this used to be Aunt Renetta's room and she bewitched it to keep her out after they'd had one of their fights." She looked at Ron, waiting for him to say something. When he didn't, she continued. " She's dead now, killed in the uprising. It's actually sad, I liked her. She was timid, kind...she shouldn't have been fighting at all."

She stood there awkwardly, the silence hung heavily between them. Ron looked around and sat down on the floor, pulling a pack of exploding cards out of his bag and proceeded to ignore her.

The silence was killing Pansy. "Listen, I have an idea, you know what happens when you stretch a rubber band again and again? It loosens up. So maybe if we stretch the binding charm again and again it would loosen up too? I'm sure you'd love to be able to move more than 10 steps away from me."

Ron shrugged and got up. "I have nothing better to do."

They spent the rest of the afternoon stepping away from each other, falling to the floor in pain when they went too far and then coming closer and trying again. By the end of the evening they had managed to step 211 steps away from each other.

Suddenly, Pansy stopped and cocked her head, listening for something.

"My mother's home." She seemed to pale. "Listen, this is important, don't speak too much okay? Okay."

A second later, her mothers voice floated faintly up the stairs to the corridor, "Pansy darling, come down, we have so much to talk about over dinner."

She was standing near the entrance when Pansy and Ron appeared at the top of the stairs. She was a tall woman, her emerald green dress cinched around her waist with a silver belt fashioned to look like a snake eating its own tail.

"Ah, I see we have company. You must be a Weasley? One of Pansy's new...friends from Gryffindor?" Her voice was warm and flowery, nothing like what Ron expected her to sound like.

"We're classmates. We've been bound together so Ronald will be staying with us until Madame Pomphrey can unbind us. I hope that's okay?"

"Of course, of course. We have a lot of rooms to spare, pick any. Please do join us for dinner in 15 minutes, Ronald. If you'd excuse me, I have work to get to."

As soon as she'd glided away Pansy frantically turned to Ron.

"Show me your clothes."

"What?"

"Please, just humour me."

She seemed desperate enough that Ron obliged, returning to her room and tugging his clothes out of his bag.

"Do you have nothing formal to wear?" she asked, looking at his jeans.

"I thought I'd be going home for winter." He said scaldingly. "Who wears formal clothes at home?"

"Where are your school robes?"

"Why?"

"Put them on, you can't wear any of these to dinner."

"I doubt your mother will mind, she seemed perfectly nice to me."

Pansy didn't say anything to that, she turned and pulled a black dress out of her wardrobe. "If you'd excuse me, I have to get changed."

When they met in the hall 10 minutes later, Ron had to admit to himself that Pansy looked beautiful. Her straight black hair hung down her back and a silver bracelet glinted against her pale skin and the angry red mark left by the binding.

" Please, don't speak too much." Pansy murmured to him. He rolled his eyes.

She grabbed his arm, "Ron, please." she sounded slightly more desperate now.

"Whatever, Pansy."

She wasn't comforted by that response, but Mrs Parkinson appeared and beckoned them with two long fingers.

"Come, we'll eat in the formal dining room since we have a guest." She smiled at Ron and Ron could see where Pansy got her good looks from.

The formal dining room was as big as the entryway was. A chandelier hung here too, but this one had hundreds of silver snakes holding lighted candles in their mouths. A long table of dark polished wood stood in the middle of the room and Pansy's mother sat at the head of it.

"Please," she gestured to some chairs, "sit."

Pansy took a seat three seats away from her mother and nodded at Ron to sit opposite her.

"How was this term, Pansy darling?" her mother asked her as two house elves scurried in with plates of food.

"It was fine." Pansy kept her eyes trained on her plate.

"And yours, Ronald?"

Ron opened his mouth to reply but Pansy glanced up and looked at him with wide eyes, shaking her head imperceptibly.

"It was...fine, Mrs Parkinson." Ron finished lamely.

"Please, call me Valette. I'm glad to hear that. Pansy I have so much to speak to you about, we should talk later tonight."

"Yes, mother."

They finished the rest of the meal in silence.

"Where do I sleep?" Ron asked Pansy as they headed upstairs after dinner.

"Just pick a room, they're all empty."

He picked the one furthest from hers, at the end of the hallway.

-X-

Ron jolted awake, peering into the dark. He fought through his confusion at the unfamiliar surroundings and his disorientation and remembered that he was in the Parkinson's mansion.

As his brain processed the surroundings he realized that a dull throbbing in his hand as well as a sense of unease had awoken him.

He got up from his bed and headed to the stairs. Surprisingly, the throbbing in his hand lessened slightly- Pansy wasn't in her room.

He crept down the stairs, using the strength of the pain to try and find Pansy. He heard them before he saw them. They were in one of the many living rooms they'd walked past on the way to the dining room. He stopped, listening at the door.

"You brought a blood traitor here? Into our home? You're a disgrace to the Parkinson name. I spent _years_ training you how to act and behave. You've been sorted into _Gryffindor,_ you lost your prefectship, your match to the Malfoy boy is _gone_. You disgust me."

"Mother, I-"

He heard a crack, followed by a cry of pain and a thump. His hand jerked with a sudden flash of pain.

He swung open the door and entered the room. Pansy hurried to stand up from where she was sprawled on the floor and Valette was smoothening out her dress.

"Pansy, we're leaving." Ron said coldly, keeping his eyes on Valette.

"Pansy isn't going anywhere. She has duties to attend to in this house."

"Pansy, we're leaving." Ron said again.

Pansy took an unsure step towards him and Mrs Parkinson raised her hand again. Ron stepped between them, looking Valette defiantly in the eye.

"Hit me," he hissed, "I dare you." He ignored Pansy's hands clenched into the back of his shirt in fear.

"How dare you?" her mother spat. She raised her wand but he was prepared and raised his just as fast.

"We're leaving." He repeated. "And you'll let us go. Because I'm sure Reeta Skeeter would just _love_ this story."

Valette smiled. "Leave then. Pansy and I will _definitely_ work this out later."

They backed out of the room.

They were standing on the road with their bags when Ron finally looked her over. Pansy looked as collected as she always did.

"Are you alright?" he finally asked her.

"I'm fine." she said, turning away.

He tugged her so that she was facing him. "You're not fine, you're bleeding." He wiped the blood from her lip with his thumb and she jerked back.

"I'm _fine_." She repeated.

"If you say so." Ron raised his right arm and she let out an involuntary whimper.

The Knight Bus pulled up in front of them.

"Did you raise your wand hand and call for us, lad?" the man said. Ron nodded, keeping his eyes on Pansy.

"Don't just stand there, get on then. Where to mate?"

"The Burrow. We're going home."


	16. Chapter 16- Being A Man

**A/N: this is a filler ch. I FINALLY figured out how to tie the whole thing together and this sets the stage for that. Plus, i just wanted to upload something to get over this writers block.**

Draco stood in front of his father's study. He seemed to visibly gather his courage, straightening his back, raising his chin and forcing his shoulders into a more relaxed position. It had been five days since the train ride home and he still hadn't managed to get rid of the sick feeling in his stomach- the feeling that he was doing something wrong. It had weighed on him, rendering him unable to eat or sleep until he was left with no other choice but to talk to his father.

Taking a deep breath, he knocked sharply on the large oak door before pushing it open and walking in.

"Father, I need to talk to you about something."

Lucius Malfoy barely glanced up from the papers he was shuffling through.

"You need more money? Just take it directly from Gringotts. You know better than to bother me with such trivialities."

He waved his hand impatiently at Draco, clearly dismissing him. For a second, Draco considered abandoning his plan altogether and retreating quietly out of the room, but a sudden sharp pain in his abdomen reminded him why he was there in the first place.

"No father, it's not that. I was wondering if it would be okay for me to talk to some Gryffindors."

His father looked up sharply.

" _What?"_

" I was wondering if it was okay if I talked to some Gryffindors."

"Of course it's not 'okay'! Why would you even suggest such a thing?"

"Father, do you really think I'd do anything without an ulterior motive? I'm just asking for a little trust, that's all."

"I trust you to win the Quidditch cup every year but you never do."

Draco paled slightly.

"Did you even think of the damage it would do to the Malfoy reputation if you were seen talking to Gryffindors?" Lucius spat the last word in disgust.

 _Be a man for once in your life, Draco._ a little voice inside Draco's head chided him as he took a step back from his father.

He steeled his nerves again.

"Father, I'm not asking your permission. I am going to talk to the Gryffindors. I have my reasons and I'm telling you this as a courtesy."

A look of cold fury passed over his father's face. " I have an appointment with the Minister that I can't be late for but I shall deal with you later."

Lucius shoved Draco aside as he left without looking at him. Draco remained standing in his father's study for a few more minutes, trying to control his breathing.

The sick feeling in his stomach was gone, for now.

Ron sat on the Burrow's garden steps with Pansy beside him, a large potted plant was placed in front of them, it whacked at their hands as they tried to pull the dead leaves off its branches. Ron couldn't help but glance at Pansy as another low laugh escaped her lips. Her black hair was tied back into a messy ponytail and there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek. She looked happier than he'd ever seen her before.

A loud _whack_ sound was followed by another one of her laughs as the plant they were pruning slapped Ron firmly across the cheek.

"Ow! What did you that for?" he cried, tearing his eyes off of Pansy, at last.

"This is what happens if you don't pay attention to what you're doing." Pansy chortled.

"Listen, are we going to pretend that that incident at your house never happened?" The smile dropped off Pansy's face and Ron regretted bringing it up but they couldn't just keep ignoring it.

"That seems like a good course of action, yeah."

"Pansy, I'm serious. How long has your mother been abusing you for? We could get her sanctioned by the ministry for abuse."

"It- It's not abuse; she's just trying to raise me to the Parkinson standards. And even if it was abuse- which it isn't- you couldn't get her sanctioned for anything this mild. The Parkinson's go way back with the ministry. She'd need to do something far, far worse."

Ron threw her a strange look, "abuse is pretty high up on the list of bad things."

"It's not abuse-" Pansy begun to protest but was interrupted by Michael Corner's sudden appearance.

"Am I interrupting something?" he asked cheerfully, sitting himself down beside them.

"Yeah, actually you-"

"Not at all." Pansy interjected smoothly, shooting Ron a warning look. "Why don't you help us?'

Michael ignored the writhing plant completely but instead began telling Pansy that she seemed much different outside Hogwart's than inside. Ron couldn't help but silently agree. He wondered if he'd misjudged her completely before remembering the stunt she'd pulled at the party.

 _Nope. I wasn't wrong about her. Get a hold of yourself._ He told himself sternly.

Harry watched the three figures sitting on the garden steps. He was peeling potatoes with slightly more force than necessary. Of all the people in the burrow at the current moment, Michael was the only one who hadn't been assigned chores. Neither had Pansy but she had insisted repeatedly on helping until Mrs Weasley finally gave in.

 _Of course he wouldn't help_ Harry thought bitterly, _He's probably never worked a day in his life._

He was startled out of his annoyance by Ginny's appearance beside him. She put his hand on his shoulder, watching Michael talking to Ron and Pansy. "They look like they're getting along perfectly." she said happily.

"Yep, Michael's just telling them about the time he and his mother were invited by the Scottish minister to watch the annual Gludgeon match." He tried his best to keep the tinge of jealousy out of his voice.

"He does seem to talk about himself a lot, doesn't he?" Her tone shifted to thoughtful.

"Tell me about it. He could give Malfoy a run for his money." he muttered darkly.

"Don't be mean." Ginny chided him but Harry could see her fighting to keep the smile off her face.

"Do you want to play quidditch afterwards? I have to get back to dusting the shelves or mum will have a fit if she finds me here, talking."

"Definitely. Hurry up and finish, I'll tell the others."


End file.
